Emergency handling in Ethernet Passive Optical Networks using priority-based dynamic bandwidth allocation

Ethernet Passive Optical Networks (EPON) is a prominent solution for broadband access networks. However, little work has been done on emergency handling in EPON. In this paper, to manage emergency cases causing severe network traffic, the network state is divided into two states, i.e., the normal and the emergency states. The authors apply new priority-based Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) algorithms to the emergency state, each of which gives high priority to some Optical Network Units (ONUs) corresponding to important agencies. The proposed algorithms are analyzed in terms of utilization of the uplink bandwidth and the packet delay. Simulation and theoretical results show that the proposed algorithms are working properly at the emergency state and can satisfy more stringent QoS requirements than the conventional Weighted Round Robin (WRR)-based algorithms.