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

https://downloads.hindawi.com/archive/2014/945364.pdf

Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) Broadband Access Networks in an Age of Convergence: Past, Present, and Future

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), broadband access networks enable the emergence of new business models, processes, inventions, as well as improved goods and services. In fact, broadband access is viewed as a so-called general purpose technology (GPT) that has the potential to fundamentally change how and where economic activity is organized. In this paper, we focus on the implications of the emerging Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) economy, which goes well beyond current austerity measures, and has recently been officially endorsed by the European Commission as the economic growth roadmap toward a competitive low carbon society by 2050. This roadmap has been receiving an increasing amount of attention by other key players, e.g., the Government of China most recently. More specifically, we describe a variety of advanced techniques to render converged bimodal fiber-wireless (FiWi) broadband access networks dependable, including optical coding based fiber fault monitoring techniques, localized optical redundancy strategies, wireless extensions, and availability-aware routing algorithms, to improve their reliability, availability, survivability, security, and safety. Next, we elaborate on how the resultant dependent FiWi access networks can be exploited to enhance the dependability of other critical infrastructures of our society, most notably the future smart power grid and its envisioned electric transportation, by means of probabilistic analysis, co-simulation, and experimental demonstration.

Dependable Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) Access Networks and Their Role in a Sustainable Third Industrial Revolution Economy

Editorial: Passive optical network (PON) supported networking

Improving the FTTH business case–A joint telco-utility network rollout model

In this paper, we study the performance of multi-tier integrated fiber-wireless (FiWi) smart grid communications infrastructures based on low cost, simple, and reliable next-generation passive optical network (PON) with quality-of-service (QoS) enabled wireless local area networks (WLANs) in terms of capacity, latency, and reliability We study the coexistence of human-to-human (H2H), eg, triple-play traffic and machine-to-machine (M2M) traffic originating from wireless sensors operating on a wide range of possible configurations Our analysis enables the quantification of the maximum achievable data rates of both event- and time-driven wireless sensors without violating given upper delay limits of H2H traffic By using experimental measurements of real-world smart grid applications, we investigate the impact of variable H2H traffic loads on the sensor end-to-end delay performance The obtained results show that a conventional Ethernet PON may cause a bottleneck and increase the delay for both H2H and M2M traffic In contrast, by using a 10 G-EPON or wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) PON, the bottleneck arises in the wireless network Furthermore, we study the interplay between time- and event-driven nodes and show that the theoretical upper bound of time-driven sensors decreases linearly as a function of the number of sensors, whereas with event-driven sensors, the upper bound decrease is nonlinear and more pronounced

Coexistence Analysis of H2H and M2M Traffic in FiWi Smart Grid Communications Infrastructures Based on Multi-Tier Business Models

Fiber to the Home delivers the most future proof solution for fixed telecom access networks. This technology requires the installation of optical fiber in the last mile. However, the penetration of FTTH services is Europe is lagging, with only marginal uptake in most countries. One of the main causes of this low penetration is the higher initial installation cost for a fiber access network. Regulation typically enforces a fully buried installation, which results in an investment cost around 750 Euro per house passed. Driving down this cost is a main focus of research. A joint rollout with other utility infrastructure network operators can decrease the initial rollout cost for all utility and telecom infrastructure actors involved in the process. This paper presents an innovative approach to cost sharing in the rollout of access networks. The cost model presented allows for cost savings up to 17% per home passed for the telecom operator.

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1263229/file/2952382.pdf

Lukas Deschuttere

Papers

Cost allocation model for a synergetic cooperation in the rollout of telecom and utility networks