512-ONU real-time dynamic load balancing with few wavelength reallocations in 40 Gbps λ-tunable WDM/TDM-PON [Invited]

The wavelength (λ)-tunable wavelength-division multiplexing/time-division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM/TDM-PON) can distribute traffic loads fairly by dynamically reallocating a certain number of optical network units (ONUs) from highly loaded optical subscriber units (OSUs) to lightly loaded OSUs. This reallocation can be executed by hitless λ-tuning. However, hitless λ-tuning causes delays or fluctuations in traffic. To reduce these penalties, the number of wavelength reallocations should be suppressed. Thus, we proposed a dynamic-load-balancing (DLB) algorithm that can distribute traffic loads among OSUs with few wavelength reallocations. However, no demonstration of the proposed DLB algorithm had been conducted up to now, and the impact of the reallocation frequency on the average latency remained unevaluated. In this paper, we demonstrate the DLB algorithm in a 40-Gbps λ-tunable WDM/TDM-PON. The demonstrations confirm that our DLB algorithm can distribute 512-ONU traffic loads fairly among 4 OSUs in real time with fewer reallocation frequencies compared to the conventional round-robin algorithm, and little impact on average latency, with various input traffic rates.