Efficient Queue Based Dynamic Bandwidth
Allocation Scheme for Ethernet PONs
Pallab K. Choudhury and Poompat Saengudomlert
Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand
Abstract—We propose an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) cen-
tric Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) scheme based on in-
dividual requests from service queues in Optical Network Units
(ONUs) for a Quality-of-Service (QoS) aware Ethernet Passive
Optical Network (EPON). The goal is to provide fairness for allo-
cating bandwidth among different service classes based on their
Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The proposed DBA scheme
makes use of the excess bandwidth of lightly loaded queues to
meet the bandwidth demand of heavily loaded queues. To im-
plement this scheme, an effective polling mechanism is incorpo-
rated to solve the idle period problem. In addition, to reduce the
scheduling overhead, the DBA scheme utilizes a novel different
cycle policy which involves selective bandwidth allocations to
different service classes based on their delay bounds. We conduct
detailed simulation experiments and compare the results with the
well-known Interleaved Polling with Adaptive Cycle Time
(IPACT) algorithm that utilizes strict priority policy.
Index Terms— Bandwidth allocation, Ethernet passive optical
network.
I. INTRODUCTION
While backbone networks have experienced substantial
growth due to the emergence of Internet traffic, access net-
works have experienced fewer changes in recent years. Ser-
vice providers are challenged with deploying access solutions
that are inexpensive, simple, scalable, and capable of deliver-
ing integrated voice, data, and video services to the subscrib-
ers.
Passive Optical Networks (PONs) bring high speed broad-
band access via fiber to the businesses, curbs, and home.
Ethernet PONs (EPONs) has gained tremendous attention
since they combine low-cost Ethernet equipment and passive
optical components. The architecture of an EPON consists of
an Optical Line Terminal (OLT), a 1:N passive optical coupler
(or splitter/combiner), and multiple Optical Network Units
(ONUs). In the upstream direction, an EPON is a multipoint-
to-point network. Since all ONUs share the same upstream
transmission medium, an EPON needs to employ some arbi-
tration mechanism to avoid data collisions and fairly share the
fiber-channel capacity [1]. EPONs are expected to support
diverse applications, such as voice communications, standard
and high-definition video (STV and HDTV), video conferenc-
ing, real-time and near-real-time transactions, and data traffic.
However, to support these applications, EPONs need to have
Class-of-Service (COS) mechanisms built in. Hence, band-
width management of the upstream channel is essential for
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successful implementation of EPONs.
The IEEE 802.3ah task force has developed the Multi-Point
Control Protocol (MPCP) to facilitate implementation of vari-
ous bandwidth allocation algorithms in EPONs. This protocol
relies on two control messages: REPORT (an upstream mes-
sage from ONU) and GATE (a downstream message from the
OLT), to request and assign transmission opportunities on the
PON. The entity that receives a GATE and responds with a
REPORT is called a logical link and is identified by Logical
Link IDentifier (LLID). The number of LLIDs instantiated on
an ONU can have a profound impact on performance, and in
fact is one of the most important design choices made in de-
signing an EPON system.
Current MPCP systems allow for two LLID assignment
policies, namely 1 LLID per ONU and 1 LLID per queue. In
the per ONU approach, each ONU is allocated a single LLID,
which is associated with all supported packet queues. In ef-
fect, this produces a hierarchical scheduling structure, where
the central scheduler (inter scheduling) running in the OLT
assigns a single, aggregated slot to the given LLID, and the
ONU must distribute this slot among the different COSs by
using a low-level scheduler (intra scheduling). In the per
queue policy, a single LLID is assigned to each packet queue,
which eliminate intra-scheduler as shown in Fig. 1. This ap-
proach employs a centralized control of OLT over each user
access and service level agreement (SLA), and makes the
ONU much simpler [2].
This paper proposes an efficient dynamic bandwidth alloca-
tion (DBA) algorithm for the per queue approach in the EPON
system. The proposed DBA scheme uses the excess bandwidth
of lightly loaded queues to help meet the bandwidth demand
of heavily loaded queues. To implement this scheme, an effec-
tive polling mechanism is incorporated to solve the idle period
problem. In addition, to reduce the overhead on bandwidth
utilization, the scheme uses a novel different cycle policy.
II. RELATED RESEARCH
In [3], the authors combined the basic IPACT (Interleaved
Polling with Adaptive Cycle Time) limited service scheme
with strict priority queuing in order to support differentiated
services. They have noticed an interesting phenomenon called
light-load penalty. This is caused by the fact that during the
time lag between ONU’s reporting queue states and the arrival
 Queue 0
ONU 0
Queue N−1
Queue 0
ONU 1
Scheduler
Queue N−1
OLT
Queue 0
ONU M-1
Queue N−1
a
Fig. 1. Scheduling with one logical link per queue.
of the corresponding grant, more packets arrive to the queues.
Newly arriving packets may have higher priority and preempt
the lower priority packets that are already reported. This leads
to some lower priority packets left in the queue and being de-
layed for multiple cycle times. Since Ethernet frames cannot
be fragmented and the new packets were not reported to the
OLT, there are also unused slot remainders.
In [4], the authors proposed a DBA algorithm by using non-
strict priority policy to overcome the light-load penalty. The
authors presented a scheme that allocates the excess band-
width resulting from lightly loaded ONUs to other highly
loaded ONUs. To implement this scheme, the OLT needs to
collect the REPORT messages from all the ONUs before it
performs DBA. However, it would result in idle periods in
which the channel is not utilized. The authors pointed out this
flaw and presented a DBA which schedules a lightly loaded
ONU instantaneously, whereas the heavily loaded ONUs will
be scheduled after collecting all the REPORT messages.
However, the DBA scheme presented in [4] may not be able
to make sufficient use of the idle period in high traffic load
because under this load all the ONUs may have a bandwidth
demand larger than the minimum guaranteed bandwidth. In
this case, the idle period is still wasted and yields low link
utilization.
In [5], the authors address the issue of fairness at the global
level and propose an algorithm for per-ONU approach. To
achieve adaptive fairness, the authors of [6] proposed an intra-
scheduling based on the Deficient Weighted Round Robin. In
[7], the authors proposed a DBA scheme that can ensure the
fairness based on the Service Level Agreement (SLA) be-
tween the OLT and the ONUs.
Most of the DBA schemes based on per ONU approach
employ inter- and intra- scheduling separately. Since ONUs
need to perform scheduling, their complexities are high and
are thus relatively expensive.
In [8], the authors presented an OLT centric DBA which
employs a credit pooling technique combined with a
weighted-share policy to partition the upstream bandwidth
among different classes of services.
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In designing our proposed scheme, we consider the follow-
ing issues relevant to most of the DBA schemes based on per
ONU approach.
1) An EPON scheduler should have a good control on a
misbehaving user so that it can effectively isolate or limit a
particular user. By using per ONU scheduling, it is difficult to
limit misbehaving high-priority classes without completely
starving all the lower priority classes. Thus, we focus on per
queue scheduling.
2) As each service queue has its own SLA, its bandwidth
should be controlled by the OLT. In the existing DBA
schemes, fairness is mainly considered among the queues in
each ONU. As a result, two queues with identical SLAs placed
in different ONUs may get different services.
In the next section, we present the proposed DBA which
overcomes the weaknesses mentioned above.
III. PROPOSED DYNAMIC BANDWIDTH ALLOCATION
Consider an EPON network with an OLT and M ONUs.
Each ONU contains N queues, each serving a class of service.
The number of queues is M × N. For this paper, we have con-
sidered three priority classes in every ONU: P0 can be mapped
to Expedited Forwarding (EF), P1 can be mapped to Assured
Forwarding (AF), and P2 can be mapped to Best Effort (BE).
Assume that the transmission rates of both upstream and
downstream links are R bps. The maximum transmission
cycle is Tmax . The guard time between two consecutive time-
slots is Tg . Accordingly, the maximum data bytes that need to
be distributed among all the queues in a cycle can be calcu-
lated as [4]
T ×R
Bmax = max −H (1)
8
where H is the overhead in bytes associated to every trans-
mission cycle, and can be expressed as [8]
( M × N ) × Tg × R
H = ( M × N ) × Lreq + (2)
8
where Lreq is the size of the REPORT message in byte (64
bytes).
Among these traffic classes, P0 traffic has Constant Bit
Rate (CBR). P1 and P2 traffic are highly bursty. As the P0
traffic represents delay-sensitive services, after serving the
entire request based on their SLA, the remaining bandwidth is
first distributed between all the P1 traffic classes with equal
weight. This allocation can be expressed as
M −1
total
Bexcess = max(0, Bmax − ∑ BrP
i
0) (3)
i=0
total
i Bexcess
Bmin P1 = (4)
M
where i = 0,....., M − 1 is the index of all the P1 traffic queues,
BrPi 0 is the requested bandwidth from each P0 traffic queue.
 i
Bmin BexcessP1
P1 is the minimum guaranteed bandwidth for each P1 for all queues in H .
i
Bmin P1 +
traffic queue. H
For P2 traffic, no bandwidth has been explicitly reserved
A. DBA1 but P2 packets can still get bandwidth that remains after serv-
ing P1 traffic queues. The excess bandwidth is distributed
In the first bandwidth assignment policy, referred to as
among all the P2 traffic queues in the same fashion as for P1
DBA1, P1 traffic queues are allocated bandwidth as follows:
traffic queues.
i i i
BassignP1 = min( BrP1 , Bmin P1 ) (5)
i th To implement both schemes, we first allocate all bandwidth
where B is the bandwidth assigned for the i P1 traffic
assignP1
the P0 traffic classes. As this class of traffic is delay sensitive,
i th
queue, BrP 1 is the requested bandwidth of the i P1 traffic we use early prediction method to reduce the grant delay of P0
queue. This approach is similar to the limited service scheme traffic queues. The idea is to predict the number of P0 packets
in IPACT [3]. We implement this policy in per queue EPON that arrive at a P0 queue during the time lag between the send-
to evaluate its performance. ing of REPORT message and the arrival of GATE message
corresponding to that request. Fig. 2 illustrates a schematic
B. DBA2 diagram of the prediction process. In a particular cycle, when
Due to the bursty nature of P1 traffic, some P1 queues may the OLT receives a REPORT message from a queue, it sets its
have less traffic to transmit and thus need smaller bandwidth counter according to the timestamp field in the received mes-
than the minimum guaranteed bandwidth (called lightly sage. The OLT produces a GATE message for the next cycle
loaded), while other queues may have more traffic to transmit which contains the start time field when the queue will start it
and need larger bandwidth (called heavily loaded). If transmission. As the P0 traffic queue has CBR packets and
i i i i i i also OLT knows the time of the next grant message, the OLT
BrP1 ≤ Bmin P1 , then BassignP1 = BrP1 . If BrP1 > Bmin P1 , the OLT can calculate the credit as
computes the excess bandwidth resulting from the lightly
loaded P1 traffic queues. The total excess bandwidth available C =  rCBR × Tdiff  × ( LCBR + LIFG + Lpreamble ) (9)
after allocating all the lightly loaded P1 queues can be ex-
where  x  denotes the smallest integer larger than or equal to
pressed as
x, rCBR is the average arrival rate of CBR packets, Tdiff is the
BexcessP1 = ∑ ( Bmin
i i
P1 −BrP1 ) (6)
i∈L difference in time between GATE start time and REPORT
where L is the set of lightly loaded P1 traffic queues in a timestamp value, LCBR is the length of CBR packet, LIFG is
transmission cycle. Let H be the set of highly loaded P1 traf- the length of inter-frame gap, and Lpreamble is the preamble
fic queues, then the total excess requested bandwidth from
overheads. In [8], the authors used this similar prediction
highly loaded P1 traffic queues can be expressed as,
mechanism in the ONU side. However, the new scheme util-
RexcessP1 = ∑ rPi 1 (7) izes this in the OLT side to control of all service classes,
i∈H which is good for fairness and can also limit any misbehaving
where rPi 1 = BrP
i i
1 − Bmin P1 the is excess bandwidth requested by traffic class.
the ith highly loaded P1 queue.
Cycle (n-1) Cycle n
If BexcessP1 ≥ RexcessP1 ,
OLT
i i
BassignP1 = BrP1 (8)
rt

ort

ort
Data

Data

Data

for each heavily loaded P1 traffic queue. If BexcessP1 < RexcessP1 ,

Repo

Rep

Rep

based on the rPi1 value, the OLT will arrange the P1 queues in
ascending order and keep track of two values: the unscheduled P0 queue
Rtime Gtime Gstart
Time

P1 queue with minimum amount of excess request denoted stamp stamp time

by rP1 , and the number of unscheduled P1 queues denoted by Request Credit value
data
H . If r × H ≤ B
P1 , the queue corresponding to r is
excessP1 P1 Fig. 2. Credit estimation of a P0 traffic class.
i
allocated the bandwidth B + rP1 . Update the value of rP1 ,
min P1
The granted bandwidth for every P0 traffic queue is
H , and BexcessP1 , and repeat the process until reaching the i i
BassignP 0 = BrP 0 + C (10)
condition r × H > B . At this point, allocate bandwidth
P1 excessP1
where i = 0,....., M − 1 .

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 After serving all the P0 traffic, the scheduler gives grants to
P1 traffic queues. Finally, if there is any bandwidth left, P2
traffic would be served.
For DBA2, to allocate bandwidth efficiently among P1 and
P2 traffic queues, the OLT will give the grants instantly when
the REPORT messages arrive from lightly loaded queues. For
heavily loaded queues, OLT will wait to collect all the
REPORT messages, and then it will produce grants based on
the total information about the excess and requested band-
width. Fig. 3 illustrates the scheduler operation. The benefit of
this new scheme is that it has no idle period problem because,
at the start of new cycle when this computation process is go-
ing on, the channel is still utilized by P0 traffic queues. This
ensures good bandwidth utilization for any load.
Decision on heavily
Transmission cycle (n-1)
loaded queues
OLT
P0 Data +
Reports
P1 Data +
P2
Reports
Data +
Reports
Grant n based on
report (n-1)
Fig. 3. Scheduler’s operation during a transmission cycle.
C. DBA3
To overcome the effect of REPORT message overhead, we
propose a different cycle policy. Fig. 4 illustrates this opera-
tion. P0 traffics are served in every cycle but for P1 traffic
once per two cycles and for P2 traffic once per four cycles. In
the per queue approach, as the traffic classes are controlled
individually, it is possible to serve some traffic more often
whereas others less often. P0 traffic like voice traffic has low
volume and is delay sensitive. P1 and P2 traffic are not delay
sensitive and highly bursty. According to their delay bound,
we can control their cycle times. According to ITU-T G.114,
round-trip delay for voice traffic in access network should not
exceed 3 ms. Delay bounds of P1 and P2 can be based on their
service requirements.
In this paper, we serve P0 traffic in every cycle to ensure
their delay bound. For P1 and P2, we have selected which
queues are served in each cycle based on their cycle times in
Fig. 4. Hence, in a particular cycle, all the queues were not
P00…M-1 P00…M-1 P00…M-1
P0
Cycle for P0
P10…M/2-1 P1M/2….M-1 P10…M/2-1
P1
Cycle for P1
P20….M/4-1
P2M/4…..M/2-1
P2
Cycle for P2
Network cycle time
Fig. 4. Different cycle policy to reduce the REPORT overhead
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 proceedings.
scheduled, resulting in the decrease of REPORT overhead
significantly.
To increase the bandwidth utilization, we modify DBA2 by
applying the different cycle policy at high loads. In high traf-
fic load, the queues are full and bandwidth demands are higher
than the minimum guaranteed bandwidth. When the OLT ob-
serves all the traffic queues overloaded, it applies the different
cycle policy by employing selective operations among P1 and
P2 service classes.
IV. SIMULATION SETUP AND RESULTS
We have developed an event-driven packet-based simulation
model using C++. To evaluate the performance of the pro-
posed algorithm, we compare it with the IPACT limited ser-
vice scheme proposed in [3] through simulation results. The
maximum distance between OLT and a queue in ONU is 20
Cycle n
km. The line rate of user-to-queue link is 100 Mbps. The
EPON line rate is 1Gbps. The guard band between adjacent
slots is 1 µs. The maximum cycle time is 2 ms. For different
cycle policy of DBA3, the maximum cycle times are: 2 ms for
P0, 4 ms for P1, and 8 ms for P2.
For traffic modeling, the P0 traffic is simulated as a CBR
Time
stream with a rate of 8000 packet/s and packet length of 70
bytes. For our simulation, we always keep the P0 load con-
stant and split the remaining load between P1 and P2 equally.
The P1 and P2 traffic classes exhibit properties of self-
similarity and long-range dependence (LRD). To generate
these two traffics, we have used ON-OFF sources with Pareto
distributions. The shape parameter for the ON and OFF inter-
vals is set to 1.4 and 1.2, respectively. We used a tri-modal
packet-size distribution similar to that observed in backbone
network [9]. Three main modes correspond to most frequent
packet sizes are: 64, 582/594, and 1518 bytes. Every point on
the plots corresponds to a sample of 500 million packets.
Consider first the average delay for P0 traffic class for all
the schemes. From Fig. 5, 6, and 7 we can see that IPACT,
DBA1, DBA2, and DBA3 schemes perform almost equally
well for P0 traffic class. For P1 traffic class, the packet delay
for DBA1 scheme is higher than IPACT. However, DBA2 and
DBA3 schemes perform better than IPACT. This result is due
to the proper allocation of excess bandwidth that remains after
serving all the P0 traffic queues and also the application of
different cycle policy in DBA3. In DBA3, at the higher load
the delay of P1 is slightly higher than that of DBA2 but it is
still lower than IPACT scheme. This is due to the different
P00…M-1 cycle policy to improve bandwidth utilization at high load
which increase some delay for P1. For all the schemes, the
P1M/2….M-1 average delay of P2 traffic at light loads is significantly lower
than that of IPACT scheme. This improvement is due to com-
plete elimination of the light load penalty problem as the OLT
P2M/2....3/4M-1 P23/4M……M-1
now gives grant based on the requests from individual queues.
In DBA1 and DBA2, at high loads, the average delay of P2
traffic is higher than IPACT scheme as it has the scheduling
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 10000 overhead effect. This delay can be minimized by using DBA3.
IPACT_P0
IPACT_P1 From Fig. 8, we can see the bandwidth utilization of all the
1000 IPACT_P2 schemes. The following formula is used to compute the utili-
DBA1_P0
DBA1_P1
zation U [10]
Avg Delay (ms)

100
DBA1_P2 Q(Tg R / 8 + Ravg + H REPORT )
U =1− (11)
10
Tavg × R / 8
where, Q is the number of queues served in each cycle ( Q =
1 48 for DBA1 and DBA2, Q = 28 for DBA3 with the different
cycle policy), Tg is the guard time, R is the EPON line
0.1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
rate, Ravg is the average slot remainder (for the proposed
ONU Load

a schemes Ravg = 0, for IPACT Ravg = 595 bytes [10] ), Tavg is

Fig. 5. Average packet delay for DBA1 and IPACT schemes.
the average cycle time and H REPORT is the length of REPORT
10000
IPACT_P0 message.
IPACT_P1
1000 IPACT_P2
From Fig. 8, all the schemes utilize the channel bandwidth
DBA2_P0 efficiently compare to IPACT. For DBA1, at high load the
Avg Delay (ms)

100
DBA2_P1
performance is low due to the overhead. We can overcome
DBA2_P2
this by employing the DBA2 and DBA3 as shown in Fig. 8.
10
V. CONCLUSION
1
We introduced an OLT centric DBA scheme that effectively
controls all the service classes in a QoS-aware EPON. As the
0.1
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
OLT have a global view, it is possible to provide SLA guaran-
ONU Load tees among the differentiated services. The proposed DBA
scheme contains the mechanisms to control the scheduling
Fig. 6. Average packet delay for DBA2 and IPACT schemes.
overhead and to improve the bandwidth utilization. The simu-
10000
IPACT_P0
lation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme
IPACT_P1 in terms of average packet delay and utilization.
1000 IPACT_P2
DBA3_P0
DBA3_P1 REFERENCES
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This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 proceedings.