Implementation of a MAC protocol in ATM-PON

Abstract

MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol is necessary for a OLT (Optical Line Termination) to allocate bandwidth to ONUs (Optical Network Units) dynamically in ATM PON (Passive Optical Network) operated in a kind of optical subscriber network having tree topology. The OLT collect information about ONUs and provide all permission with each ONU effectively by means of MAC protocol. Major functions of MAC protocol are composed of the algorism for distributing permission demanded by a ONU dynamically and allocation all permission used in APON properly. Sometimes MAC get to be a element of limiting the whole operation speed and occupy a most frequent operation part of the TC (Transmission Convergence) function module so it have to be designed to guarantee the best quality for each traffic. This paper introduce the way of implementation of a algorism which satisfy all of the upper conditions. This MAC algorism allocate bandwidth according to a number of working ONU and the information of the queue length dynamically and distribute permission for same interval to minimize delay variation of each ONU cell. MAC scheduler for the dynamic bandwidth allocation which is introduced in this paper has look-up table structure that makes programming possible. This structure is very suitable for implementation and operated in high speed because it require very simple and small chip size.