Centralized vs. Decentralized Bandwidth Allocation for Supporting Green Fog Integration in Next-Generation Optical Access Networks

摘要

The surging numbers of wireless devices and the accompanying exponential growth of user traffic have led edge and fog computing to become essential components in future access networks. By bringing more processing toward the edge of the network, they enable the realization of various demanding applications while supporting numerous resource-constrained devices. Their integration with passive optical networks and their huge offered bandwidth has therefore attracted much research interest. In this article, we review these computing concepts and examine key considerations for their integration with long-reach optical access networks when the employed upstream bandwidth allocation is either centralized or decentralized.