Wireless Channel Condition Aware Scheduling Algorithm for Hybrid Optical/Wireless Networks

Recent research activities about hybrid optical wireless networks become attractive. In this paper, we provide an overview on integration of an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) and a worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) network. Gateway node that integrates both optical scheduling and wireless scheduling functions gains most interests. We promote a question: how the scheduler at optical network unit is affected by its wireless connections when ONUs transfer packets to optical line terminal. Scheduling algorithms have been proposed intensively in EPON system. However, the existing scheduling algorithms are only for either pure optical networks or pure wireless networks. Within this paper, we propose to design packet scheduling schemes that take wireless channel condition into account for the hybrid optical wireless networks. Our scheduling scheme is based on a cost function, which considers not only the packet transmission but also the radio link condition.