A general model for hybrid fiber-wireless (FiWi) access network virtualization

Abstract

The fiber-wireless (FiWi) access network combines plenty of available bandwidth of the fiber network and the ubiquity and mobility of the wireless network, with the purpose to reduce their cost and complexity. The FiWi network is thought by many as a very promising architecture for the future network. From the standpoint of the Internet service provider (ISP), though the FiWi network has the advantages of high capacity and high flexibility, there is still a great discordant part between the fiber subnetwork and the wireless subnetwork, which is the necessary transformation of their protocols. Technically, it is still difficult to achieve the FiWi network's seamless networking. In this paper, we apply network virtualization to hide the differences between the fiber network and the wireless network, in which the ISP is separated into two independent entities: the infrastructure provider (InP) and the service provider (SP). We also propose a general model for the FiWi access network virtualization. The proposed model decouples applications from infrastructure networks and allows SPs provide users with services carried by granular virtual networks (VNs), which is composed by the virtual resources allocated by InPs. The results of a simulation are demonstrated, which prove that our model is superior to the FiWi network without virtualization.