Analysis of a probing-based cyclic sleep mechanism for passive optical networks

Recent standardization efforts to reduce power consumption in optical access networks include the use of cyclic sleep modes to more effectively scale energy consumption with activity. This paper analyzes a probing-based cyclic sleep mode mechanism that is applied to the downstream of a passive optical network. The analysis studies the effectiveness of the sleep mode mechanism and provides explicit mathematical expressions for the power consumption and packet response delay in the optical network unit (ONU) at the customer premises, and the amount of buffered traffic per ONU in the optical line terminal at the central office. The analytical results are confirmed and complemented by numerical simulations, and used to provide guidelines for selecting sleep mode configuration parameters.