  Current Gigabit-class passive optical networks (PONs) evolve into
next-generation PONs, whereby high-speed 10+ Gb/s time division multiplexing
(TDM) and long-reach wavelength-broadcasting/routing wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM) PONs are promising near-term candidates. On the other hand,
next-generation wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on frame aggregation
techniques will leverage physical layer enhancements, giving rise to
Gigabit-class very high throughput (VHT) WLANs. In this paper, we develop an
analytical framework for evaluating the capacity and delay performance of a
wide range of routing algorithms in converged fiber-wireless (FiWi) broadband
access networks based on different next-generation PONs and a Gigabit-class
multi-radio multi-channel WLAN-mesh front-end. Our framework is very flexible
and incorporates arbitrary frame size distributions, traffic matrices,
optical/wireless propagation delays, data rates, and fiber faults. We verify
the accuracy of our probabilistic analysis by means of simulation for the
wireless and wireless-optical-wireless operation modes of various FiWi network
architectures under peer-to-peer, upstream, uniform, and nonuniform traffic
scenarios. The results indicate that our proposed optimized FiWi routing
algorithm (OFRA) outperforms minimum (wireless) hop and delay routing in terms
of throughput for balanced and unbalanced traffic loads, at the expense of a
slightly increased mean delay at small to medium traffic loads.
