Sleep mode scheduling technique for energy saving in TDM-PONs

Abstract: Nowadays energy efficiency of telecommunication networks is receiving more attention than in the past for natural reasons. The situation is critical especially for access networks that typically include many end-user devices that consume a lot of energy. This thesis proposes a novel sleep mode technique for TDM-PONs that turns off the ONUs  (placed at the customer premises) when certain traffic conditions are verified. The objective is to achieve an improved energy efficiency without impacting too much the Quality of Service perceived by end-users. The whole operation is managed at the OLT (placed at the provider central office) and the length of the sleep time periods is computed employing a statistical method. An approximated version has been implemented in hardware for proof of concept. The obtained results show that the proposed sleep mode technique has good performances for  some test cases while it should be avoided for others.