Integrated Wireless-pon access Network Architectures Milos Milosavljevic

3.1 Optical/Wireless Research Initiatives
The European FP7 IP project, “architectures for flexible photonic home and access networks” 
(ALPHA) [1] is set to investigate the architecture and transmission properties associated with 
the integration of wired and wireless technologies over a converged system infrastructure. The 

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Chapter 3 Optical and Wireless PHY Integration
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ALPHA project mainly addresses the challenges of building the future access and all types of 
in-building networks for home and office environments using primarily the latest physical layer 
(PHY) dispersion mitigation properties as well as architecture solutions and adequate control 
and management. The project supports the evolution towards a cognitive network by 
dynamically utilising the resources of an optical network infrastructure to support a 
heterogeneous environment of wired and wireless technologies. This is expected to be achieved 
by means of wireless signal propagation over the manifold of optical fibres (single-, multi-mode 
and plastic). In particular, ALPHA is intended to transport existing 2G/3G and Beyond 3G 
(B3G) signals whether they are IP or non-IP-based. 
In comparison, the FP7 “fibre optic networks for distributed and extendible heterogeneous radio 
architectures” (FUTON) [2] project aims at researching, developing and validating a flexible 
architecture for wireless systems based on the joint processing of the radio signals from distinct 
remote antenna units and supported by a transparent fibre infrastructure. This allows the 
development of virtual multiple antenna transmission/reception concepts to achieve broadband 
wireless transmission, and also inter-cell interference cancellation.
Alternatively to mitigate frequency congestion at the microwave bands, research and 
development activities have shifted into the millimetre spectrum [3-6]. The RoF transmission in 
these bands is an ideal technology for home pico-cellular network architectures offering data 
rates above 1 Gbit/s [6]. The generic architecture and technologies of the optical-wireless home 
networks is shown in Figure 3-1 [7]. 

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