Performance Evaluation Reprogrammable Hybrid Fiber-Wireless Router Testbed for Educational Module

Abstract

Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) network is an integration of fiber optic and wireless connections in the same network. It is one of the best solutions to overcome rapid increment of Internet users and bandwidth-hungry services. To facilitate fundamental knowledge and further understanding on FiWi for students and researchers at the university level, this article proposes the development of a fast integration and scalable FiWi router testbed using Raspberry Pis as the embedded system-based hardware for lab-scale experiments. The performance of the router testbed in terms of end-to-end delay and throughput for upstream and downstream are evaluated. The delay values comply with IEEE 802.15.4 routing scheme. The performance of the router testbed is compared with the industrial grade offthe-shelf router in terms of throughput for each network. A testbed stress test is conducted by sending two data traffics simultaneously, and the performance test is repeated for Wireless-Fiber-Wireless and Fiber-Wireless-Fiber network architecture. The results show the proposed router testbed is scalable, flexible, and capable of fast integration.