Abstract
After describing the beginnings and state of the art of integrated fiber-wireless (FiWi) broadband access networks in great detail, we briefly review recent progress and point to various ongoing research activities, including the design of energy-efficient “green” FiWi access networks, advanced survivability techniques, and integration of wireless and fiber optic sensors, towards realizing adaptable, dependable, and ecoconscious future-proof broadband access networks based on both wireless and shared passive fiber media. Furthermore, we discuss service, application, business, and operation related aspects, which motivate access technology to move into a substantially different direction in the long run than continued capacity provisioning. Given that most 4G cellular mobile network researches so far have been focusing on the achievable performance gains in the wireless front-end only without looking into the details of backhaul implementations and possible backhaul bottlenecks, we identify open key research challenges for FiWi broadband access networks. We explore ways of how they can be deployed across relevant economic sectors other than telecommunications per se, taking major paradigm shifts such as the Third Industrial Revolution, Energy Internet, smart grid, and explosion of mobile data traffic in today’s cellular networks into account.
Highlights
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), broadband enables individuals and enterprises to access a wide range of resources, services, and products related to education, culture, entertainment, telemedicine, ecommerce, public safety, and homeland security
The research and development vision of an ideal access system architecture was outlined in [85], identifying the following three key design goals of future broadband access network architectures: (i) “adaptable,” (ii) “dependable,” and (iii) “ecoconscious.” Toward this end, the authors concluded that passive network infrastructures should be used as much as possible and passive equipment may be shared in order to enable cost reduction, promote open and fair service competition, create novel value-added services, and introduce original business ideas for the realization of future-proof broadband access networks based on both wireless and fiber media
We argue that FiWi access networks will represent a cornerstone of future broadband installations and explore ways of how they can be deployed across relevant economic sectors other than telecommunications per se
Summary
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), broadband enables individuals and enterprises to access a wide range of resources, services, and products related to education, culture, entertainment, telemedicine, ecommerce, public safety, and homeland security. This figure illustrates that an increasing percentage of broadband subscribers rely on fiber access technologies at the expense of legacy DSL solutions. FCC has recently unveiled the United States’ first national broadband plan with the goal to provide every American with broadband access speeds of 100 Mb/s by 2020 Toward this goal, fiber (together with next-generation wireless) broadband technologies will play an increasingly vital role in future broadband access networks. Fiber (together with next-generation wireless) broadband technologies will play an increasingly vital role in future broadband access networks This is already witnessed by installed state-of-the-art VDSL equipment, which is almost exclusively based on optical fiber backhaul solutions.
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