Traffic Load-Based LPI Control Mechanism in Ethernet Access Network

IEEE802.3az working group has recommended LPI based Energy Efficient Ethernet standard in order to efficiently reduce unnecessary waste of energy that might occur while there is no data to be transmitted. This paper proposes an enhanced LPI control mechanism to improve energy efficiency between terminal equipment and Ethernet switch in an EEE environment. The proposed mechanism measures the amount of traffic coming to the terminal during specific period of time. According to the measured traffic amount, ON and OFF duration for the following basic cycle will be decided. The performance evaluation results indicate that the suggested mechanism improves the overall performance in a way of significant reduction of energy consumption while it maintains an average packet delay to similar levels compared to the traditional method.