NSFC 61571288: "Performance analysis for IEEE802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet based on hybrid embedded Markov chain", 2016/1 - 2019/12

Abstract: Ethernet devices are widely used in telecommunication networks. With ever-growing data rate, the rising energy consumption of enormous Ethernet devices will eventually become a serious burden of the network development. The industrial standard IEEE802.3az protocol was proposed to enhance the energy efficiency of Ethernet devices. The key idea of the protocol standard is to put the Ethernet interfaces into sleep mode when the channel is idle. Therefore, the parameters designed to wake-up interfaces in sleep mode play the dominating role in respect to the energy efficiency and latency performance of the IEEE802.3az protocol. Meantime only some partial analytic results are available in existing literatures; they are far from a comprehensive understanding of the impact of these parameters on system performances. On the other hand, simulations are incapable to provide any insightful information for selecting optimal parameters of the protocol. In this project, we propose a hybrid embedded Markov chain model of the Energy Efficient Ethernet to tackle this optimal parameter design problem. In the proposed model, we consider the Markov chain of Energy Efficient Ethernet embedded in both vacation termination points and service completion points. The aim of this project is to reveal the impact of these key parameters on the system performance under different input traffic patterns based on the proposed hybrid embedded Markov chain. In the end, we expect to establish an optimal parameter design policy of the IEEE802.3az protocol. Our preliminary research results already demonstrated many unexplored energy efficiency and latency properties of this protocol. We therefore expect that a fully comprehensive study of the proposed hybrid embedded Markov chain model will provide a solid theoretical foundation for the next-generation Energy Efficient Ethernet Protocol Standard.