Overview of MAC Protocols for EPONs

Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) has been regarded as the best candidature for next-generation access network, because it represents the convergence of the inexpensive Ethernet equipment and high-bandwidth fiber infrastructure. In EPON networks, multiple Optical Network Units (ONUs) share the upstream bandwidth to transmit data packets to the Optical Line Terminal (OLT). An efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is required in EPONs to arbitrate upstream transmissions. Many efforts have been put on the design of MAC protocols, especially Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) schemes, in EPONs. This chapter aims to present a comprehensive survey on the up-to-date DBA schemes for EPON networks. We have provided a categorization method to classify numerousDBA schemes into corresponding groups. Besides the description and comments for each individual scheme, this chapter has also provided common features as well as the merits and shortcomings for each category of DBA schemes.