Guest Editorial Broadband Access Networks - IEEE Xplore

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vation to exploit the high-bandwidth capacity of fiber-optic tech- nology and the .... School of Information Technology and Engineering ... Jun Zheng received his Ph.D. degree .... Distinguished Lecturer at the University of California at San.
IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

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Guest Editorial Broadband Access Networks: Architectures and Protocols

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ith the rapid deployment of optical fibers over the past decade, the backbone of the telecommunications infrastructure has experienced a tremendous growth in its bandwidth capacity. On the other hand, subscriber access networks, which cover the “last mile/first mile” of the infrastructure and serve numerous residential users, have not experienced the same growth rate. The local subscriber lines for telephone and cable television are still using twisted pairs and coaxial cables. Many residential connections to the Internet are still through dial-up modems operating at a low speed on twisted pairs. With the everincreasing users’ demands for various broadband applications, such as Internet telephony, high-definition television (HDTV), video and audio streaming, interactive online gaming, the “last mile/first mile” segment has become a bandwidth bottleneck in today’s telecommunications infrastructure, which has largely limited the development of broadband services to subscriber users. Although recent deployment of innovative xDSL and CaTV technologies has significantly upgraded this segment, these technologies are insufficient for meeting the ever-increasing bandwidth demand of subscriber users. To address this problem, FTTx technologies have long been envisioned as a preferred solution to providing broadband services to residential users, and passive optical networks (PONs) have been widely considered as a promising technology for implementing various FTTx solutions, such as fiber-to-the-curb (FTTC), fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). Meanwhile, recent advances in wireless communication technologies have led to significant innovations that enable wireless access networks to provide much more bandwidth than before. WiMAX, as a standard-based technology, has emerged as an alternative to cable and DSL, and has demonstrated great potentials to provide broadband transmission services to both residential and mobile users with mobility and less expensive deployment. Most recently, there has been a tremendous interest in integrated optical and wireless access networks with the motivation to exploit the high-bandwidth capacity of fiber-optic technology and the low-cost and mobility support of wireless technology. Regardless of the technology used, a promising broadband access network must not only be able to provide reliable and high-quality broadband services, but also be implemented cost-effectively. This presents many challenges in the design of network architectures and protocols, which have motivated a significant amount of research activities in both academia and industry. The purpose of this special issue is to expose the readership of IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications (IEEE J-SAC) to the latest research advances in broadband access networks, focused on network architectures and protocols.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSAC.2009.090201

This special issue includes a collection of thirteen outstanding research papers, which cover a diversity of topics on the design of network architectures and protocols for passive optical networks (PONs), WiMAX networks, and integrated optical and wireless access networks. The first two papers are on integrated optical and wireless networks. In the paper “Convergence of Ethernet PON and IEEE 802.16 Broadband Access Networks and its QoS-Aware Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation Scheme,” Yang et al. proposed a converged EPON and WiMAX network which combines the high bandwidth capacity of optical communications and the mobility of wireless communications. The paper presents the network architecture and identifies some unique research issues in the design of the network. Moreover, it investigated a dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme specifically designed for the converged network, which takes into account the unique features of the converged network to enable a smooth data transmission across the optical and wireless networks and to provision an end-to-end differentiated service to meet diverse Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of different users. In the paper “Capacity and Delay of Hybrid Wireless Broadband Access Networks,” Li et al. proposed a hybrid wireless network for broadband access and studied the network performance in terms of throughput capacity and average packet delay. It is found that for most cases hybrid wireless networks can provide high throughput capacity and low packet delay, and is thus a good solution for broadband access. The next three papers cover various issues of optical passive networks (PONs). In “Architecture to Integrate Multiple PONs with Long Reach DWDM Backhaul,” Shea and Mitchell experimentally demonstrated the feasibility of an architecture which consolidates a number of deployed PON infrastructures into a long-reach high-split ratio system. A complete study of potential implementations was performed with experimental results showing the target performance achieved in the system. In “Multi-Thread Polling: A Dynamic Bandwidth Distribution Scheme for Long-Reach PON,” Song et al. proposed a multi-thread polling algorithm to efficiently and fairly allocate the upstream bandwidth in long-reach PON. This DBA scheme exploits the benefits of having multiple polling processes running simultaneously and enabling users to send bandwidth requests before receiving acknowledgements from the central office, and it can thus improve the network performance in terms of average packet delay and network throughput. In “Performance Evaluation of an Optical Transparent Access Tier Based on PON and Spectral Codes,” Huiszoon et al. proposed an optical transparent architecture based on PONs and spectral amplitude encoded optical codes, which enables all-optical communication between network nodes.

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IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

The remaining eight papers cover various aspects of WiMAX networks. In “Scheduling in IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX Networks: Key Issues and a Survey,” So-In et al. discussed the key issues in designing scheduling mechanisms for mobile WiMAX networks and presented a rather comprehensive survey of major scheduling mechanisms in the literature, and categorized various schemes based on the use of channel conditions. In “Capacity Analysis of Reservation-Based Random Access for Broadband Wireless Access Networks,” Vinel et al. proposed a novel model for analyzing the capacity of a reservation-based random multiple access system, which can be applied to the analysis of a medium access control protocol for WiMAX networks. In “Adaptive Downlink and Uplink Channel Split Ratio Determination for TCP-Based Best Effort Traffic in TDDBased WiMAX Networks,” Chiang et al. studied the determination of downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) channel split ratio for Time Division Duplex (TDD)-based IEEE 802.16 wireless networks and proposed an Adaptive Split Ratio (ASR) scheme which adjusts the bandwidth ratio of DL to UL adaptively based on the current traffic profile, wireless interference, and transport layer parameters in order to maximize the aggregate throughput of TCP-based traffic. In “Optimal Energy-Efficient Pair-Wise Cooperative Transmission Scheme for WiMax Mesh Networks,” Wang et al. proposed an optimal power-saving cooperative transmission scheme for WiMAX networks, which introduces a pairwise matching procedure between the subscriber stations prior to uplink data transmission in the WiMax mesh mode. In “A Multiobjective Optimization Framework for IEEE 802.16e Network Design and Performance Analysis,” Gordejuela et al. presented a multi-objective optimization framework for designing the architecture of mobile WiMAX access networks. In “Adaptive Subcarrier Allocation Schemes for Wireless OFDMA Systems in WiMAX Networks,” Biagioni et al. proposed a couple of adaptive subcarrier allocation algorithms for wireless OFDMA systems in WiMAX networks by sharing the network bandwidth among users based on specific channel conditions without loosing bandwidth efficiency and fairness. In “Joint Scheduling and Resource Allocation in Uplink OFDM Systems for Broadband Wireless Access Networks,” Huang et al. presented an optimization-based formulation for the scheduling and resource allocation problem in an uplink OFDM system for broadband wireless access networks such as WiMAX and LTE, and proposed an optimal algorithm (with high complexity) as well as a family of low-complexity heuristics to solve the problem. In the last paper, “A Cross-Layer Design Framework for Robust IPTV Services over IEEE 802.16 Networks,” She et al. introduced a cross-layer design framework for robust and efficient video multicasting over IEEE 802.16 networks in metropolitan areas and analyzed its video quality performance in terms of the total recoverable bit-streams by a receiver. We thank all the authors who submitted their papers to this special issue. We received a total of sixty-six submissions in response to our Call for Papers, more than five times the number of papers that could be published. Owing to the limitation of space, only thirteen papers are included in the issue. We are so grateful to all the reviewers for their time and inputs in care-

fully reviewing all the papers and providing valuable review comments. We appreciate the Editor-in-Chief, Pamela Cosman, and the Executive Editor, Laurel Greenidge, for giving support and guidance during the whole process of this special issue. We also thank the liaison editor, Moshe Zukerman, for providing valuable comments in making the final decisions. In addition, we are thankful to Sue Lange, the Digital Production Manager, and all other publication staff for their support and help during the publication process. It is our hope that the papers included in this special issue present a good snapshot of the latest research advances in broadband access networks and become an important reference for researchers and practitioners in the area. Finally, we hope that the readers of IEEE J-SAC will find this special issue timely, informative, and stimulating. Jun Zheng, Lead Guest Editor School of Information Technology and Engineering University of Ottawa Ottawa, Canada Nirwan Ansari, Guest Editor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering New Jersey Institute of Technology Newark, USA Imrich Chlamtac, Guest Editor CreateNet Research Consortium University of Trento Trento, Italy Victor O. K. Li, Guest Editor Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China Ting Wang, Guest Editor Broadband and Mobile Networks NEC Laboratories America, Inc., USA Princeton, USA Moshe Zukerman, J-SAC Board Representative Jun Zheng received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from The University of Hong Kong, China, in 2000. He received his M.S. degree in Communications and Electronic systems, and B.S. degree in Wireless Communications Engineering from Xidian University, China. He is currently a Full Professor with the School of Information Science and Engineering of the Southeast University, China. He is an Associate Technical Editor of IEEE Communications Magazine, an Editor of IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, and an Associate Editor of several refereed journals,

IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

including IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, Wiley Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, Wiley Security and Communication Networks, Inderscience International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, and Inderscience International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems. He has served as Lead Guest Editor of eight special issues for different refereed journals and magazines, including IEEE Network and IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC). He has served as General Chair of AccessNets’07 and AdHocNets’09, and TPC Co-Chair and Symposium Co-Chair for several international conferences and symposiums, including IEEE GLOBECOM’08 and IEEE ICC’09. He has also served on the technical program committees of a number of international conferences and symposia. Dr. Zheng has conducted extensive research in the field of telecommunications and computer networks. The scope of his research includes the design and analysis of network architectures and protocols for efficient and reliable communications, and their applications to different types of networks, covering wireless networks, optical networks, and IP networks. His current research interests include broadband access networks, wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, and optical networks, focused on network architectures and protocols. He has co-authored (first author) the book Optical WDM Networks: Concepts and Design Principle published by Wiley-IEEE Press and is the lead editor of an upcoming book entitled Wireless Sensor Networks: A Networking Perspective, which will be published by Wiley-IEEE Press. He has published over 80 technical papers in refereed journals and magazines, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings. Nirwan Ansari received the B.S.E.E. (summa cum laude) from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Newark, in 1982, the M.S.E.E. degree from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1983, and the Ph.D. degree from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 1988. He joined NJIT’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as Assistant Professor in 1988, and has been a Full Professor since 1997. He has also assumed various administrative positions at NJIT. He authored Computational Intelligence for Optimization (Springer, 1997, translated into Chinese in 2000) with E.S.H. Hou, and edited Neural Networks in Telecommunications (Springer, 1994) with B. Yuhas. His current research focuses on various aspects of broadband networks and multimedia communications. He has also contributed over 300 technical papers, over one third of which in refereed journals/magazines. He is a Senior Technical Editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine, and also serves on the Advisory Board of Journal of Communications, and on the editorial board of Computer Communications, the ETRI Journal, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, and the Journal of Computing and Information Technology. He was the founding general chair of the First IEEE International Conference on Information Technology: Research and Education (ITRE2003), was instrumental, while serving as its Chapter Chair, in rejuvenating the North Jersey

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Chapter of the IEEE Communications Society which received the 1996 Chapter of the Year Award and a 2003 Chapter Achievement Award, served as Chair of the IEEE North Jersey Section and in the IEEE Region 1 Board of Governors during 2001-2002, and has been serving in various IEEE committees such as Chair of IEEE COMSOC Technical Committee on Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks, and Chair/TPC Chair of several conferences/symposia. He has been frequently invited to deliver keynote addresses, distinguished lectures, tutorials, and talks. His awards and recognitions include an IEEE Fellow (Communications Society), the NJIT Excellence Teaching Award in Graduate Instruction (1998), IEEE Region 1 Award (1999), IEEE Leadership Award (2007, from Central Jersey/Princeton Section), the NJIT Excellence in Teaching in Outstanding Professional Development (2008), IEEE MGA Leadership Award 2008), and designation as an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer. Imrich Chlamtac holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota (1979). He received his B.Sci. and M.Sci. degrees in mathematics with Highest Distinction from Tel Aviv University (1977). Dr. Chlamtac is the President of CREATE-NET, an international European research consortium. He was recruited by the University of Texas at Dallas in Fall 1996 to develop telecommunications research and build a bridge to Telecom Corridor, the largest concentration of telecommunications companies in US. As Distinguished Chair in Telecommunications, endowed professor and Director of CATSS, the Center for Advanced Telecommunication Systems, he was instrumental in building up one of the largest industry-university partnerships funded through TexTec and other successful initiatives. Prior to joining UTD, Dr. Chlamtac was on faculty at Technion the Israel Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Photonics Center. He holds several honorary appointments including the Bruno Kessler Honorary Professorship from University of Trento, Sackler Professorship, Tel Aviv University, the University Professorship at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary, the Honorary Professorship at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, and is a Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Chlamtac is the co-founder and past President of Consip Ltd., and of BCN Inc., a company specializing in communication and multimedia systems design and integration. For his work on access protocols, Dr. Chlamtac was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1993 and in 1997 a Fellow of the ACM for introducing the concept of lightpaths, the basis for all-optical wavelength-routed networks. In 1994 he received the Fulbright Scholarship. He is the 2001 recipient of the ACM Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research on Mobility and the 2002 recipient of the IEEE Award for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Wireless Personal Communications. He is a winner of the New Talents in Simulations Award

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IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

from the Society of Computer Simulation for the concept of network emulators (1980) and the recipient of multiple ACM and an SPIE best paper awards. He has lectured worldwide as IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (1993 and 2000-2001), and was the plenary and keynote speaker at leading conferences. He participated in research awards exceeding $25M in USA and secured over $15M of CREATE-NET funding in Europe since 2004. He has graduated over two dozen PhD students and published close to four hundred refereed journal and conference articles. He is the co-author of multiple Books, Book and Encyclopedias Chapters, including the first textbook on LANs entitled “Local Networks: Motivation, Technology and Performance” (1980), “Wireless and Mobile Network Architectures,” (John Wiley & Sons 2000), the latter an IEEE Network Editor’s choice, as well as Amazon.com engineering books best-seller, and “Broadband Services to Businesses and Communities” (John Wiley & Sons 2004). Dr. Chlamtac is listed in ISIHighlyCited.Com among 250 most cited Computer Science researchers worldwide. Dr. Chlamtac serves as the founding Editor in Chief of the ACM/URSI/Springer Wireless Networks (WINET), the ACM/Springer Journal on Special Topics in Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET). In the past, he served as EiC of the SPIE Optical Magazine and was on the editorial boards and advisory boards of IEEE Transactions on Communications, Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, High Speed Networks Journal, Telecommunication Systems, the Photonic Network Communications Journal and the Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications. Dr. Chlamtac acted as General Chair of leading ACM and IEEE conferences and workshops and is also the founder and Steering Committee Chair of ACM/IEEE MobiCom, the world premier conference on mobility. Under his leadership CREATE-NET has established a number of Europe-centric conferences, including IEEE/ CREATE-NET Securecomm, IEEE/CREATE-NET Broadnets, IEEE/CREATE-NET Tridentcom and IEEE/CREATE-NET Comsware. He is also the founder of multiple other conferences including CREATE-NET Mobiquitous, Qshine, WiOpt, Infoscale, and other events. He is also the founder and past Chairman of ACM SigMobile, the Special Interest Group on Mobile Computing and Networking.

the University, and on various corporate boards. His research is in information technology, including all-optical networks, wireless networks, and Internet technologies and applications. Sought by government, industry, and academic organizations, he has lectured and consulted extensively around the world. Prof. Li chaired the Computer Communications Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society 1987-1989, and the Los Angeles Chapter of the IEEE Information Theory Group 1983-1985. He co-founded the International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (IC3N), and chaired its Steering Committee 1992-1997. He also chaired various international workshops and conferences, including, most recently, IEEE INFOCOM 2004 and IEEE HPSR 2005. Prof. Li has served as an editor of IEEE Network, IEEE JSAC Wireless Communications Series, IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, and Telecommunication Systems. He also guest edited special issues of IEEE JSAC, Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, and KICS/IEEE Journal of Communications and Networking. He is now serving as an editor of ACM/Springer Wireless Networks. Prof. Li has been appointed to the Hong Kong Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee by the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). He served as a part-time member of the Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong Government. He has also served on the Innovation and Technology Fund (Electronics) Vetting Committee, the Small Entrepreneur Research Assistance Programme Committee, and the Engineering Panel of the Research Grants Council. He was a Distinguished Lecturer at the University of California at San Diego, at the National Science Council of Taiwan, and at the California Polytechnic Institute. Prof. Li has also delivered keynote speeches at many international conferences. He has received numerous awards, including, most recently, the PRC Ministry of Education Changjiang Chair Professorship at Tsinghua University, Beijing, the UK Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Visiting Fellowship in Communications, the Outstanding Researcher Award of the University of Hong Kong, the Croucher Foundation Senior Research Fellowship, and the Order of the Bronze Bauhinia Star, Government of HKSAR, China. He was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1992. He is also a Fellow of the HKIE and the IAE.

Victor O.K. Li received SB, SM, EE and ScD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massa-chusetts, in 1977, 1979, 1980, and 1981, respectively. He joined the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, California, USA in February 1981, and became Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the USC Communication Sciences Institute. Since September 1997 he has been with the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, where he is Associate Dean (Research) of Engineering, and Chair Professor of Information Engineering at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He has also served as Managing Director of Versitech Ltd., the technology transfer and commercial arm of

Ting Wang received his B.S.E.E. degree from Beijing Polytechnic University, M.S.E.E. degree from the City University of New York, and Ph. D. degree from Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China. He has been with NEC Laboratories America, Inc. since 1991 and currently is a department head for optical networking research. He is currently serving as Vice Chair of IEEE ComSoc Technical Subcommittee on Fiber and Wireless Technologies (TC-FiWi). His recent research interests include optical networking, optical access technology and high speed signal transmission, network control and management, and optical wireless integration. He is the author or co-author of approximately 70 publications and 30 U. S. patents.