Towards Green Broadband Access Networks

Abstract—Energy consumption in next-generation access networks is rapidly increasing with the increase of bandwidth demands. In this paper, we devise design techniques aimed to build “green” access networks to reduce energy consumption. We apply these techniques on a novel access network paradigm named Wireless- Optical Broadband Access Network (WOBAN). We present a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) model to investigate the power consumption in WOBAN over dynamic traffic profiles. We analyze the impact of energy-aware design on the performance of WOBAN. Our results indicate that there are large scopes of power savings if we incorporate energy-aware design and routing in access networks