Toward energy-efficient 1G-EPON and 10G-EPON with sleep-aware MAC control and scheduling

To rapidly meet increasing traffic demands from subscribers, the IEEE 802.3av task force was charged to study the 10G-EPON system to increase the data rate to 10 times the line rate of 1G-EPON. With the increase of the line rate, the energy consumption of 10G-EPON increases accordingly. Achieving low energy consumption with 10G-EPON has attracted broad research attention from both academia and industry. In this article we first briefly discuss the key features of 10G-EPON. Then, from the perspective of MAC-layer control and scheduling, we discuss challenges and possible solutions to put optical network units into low-power mode for energy saving. More specifically, we detail sleep-mode control and sleep-aware traffic scheduling schemes in two scenarios: sleep for over one DBA cycle, and sleep within one DBA cycle.