Integrated Wireless-pon access Network Architectures Milos Milosavljevic

Optical and Wireless PHY Integration
wave transmission [7] 
wave signals are generated and mixed by using a cost 
efficient all optical approach. After being transmitted over an optical network they are detected 
at the home gateway and distributed to each room. The key enabling technologies for optical 
n addition, some studies have 
considered convergence of WiFi, WiMAX and millimetre wave signals on a common 
based on optical interleaves to separate these frequency bands at the base 
However, this approach could lead to 
network complexity as the number of components required is 
similar philosophy, a different research group has been focusing on a network 
multiplication (OFM) technique for mm-waveband 
detection of an optical signal 
frequency RF signal. The desired signal is 

---

Chapter 3 Optical and Wireless PHY Integration
42 
Another project targeting mm-waves for delivering Gbit/s services within home networks is the 
European project, “home gigabit access” (OMEGA) [10]. The UWB, broadcasting by use of 
visible-light communications (VLC), power-line communications (PLC) or even wireless mesh 
technologies are investigated.
However, OMEGA does not consider the use of optical infrastructures or provide user mobility 
and hybrid optical/wireless routing while the remaining in-home network initiatives can find no 
applications at access and beyond area networks. They also assume the provision of a FTTH 
access gateway that might not be the case in the majority of deployment scenarios, prohibited 
by the cost.
In a different direction, there is strong motivation to extend the optical infrastructure with 
wireless mesh access [11, 12]. Wireless mesh networks (WMN), have individually received 
research attention in the last few years [13-15]. This trend is driven by the existence of real-
world, community-oriented WMNs and also by the ease of deployment and inherent resilience 
features due to path redundancy. Most approaches are focused on IEEE 802.11-based networks, 
with intelligence built into mesh nodes so that wise routing decisions can be made. However, 
there are distinct problems in the operation of WMNs, which mainly stem from the very nature 
of wireless communication in an unlicensed spectrum. Bandwidth may be scarce and 
interference may cause significant performance degradation, thus traditional approaches for 
various network functions cannot readily be applied to WMNs to achieve comparable 
performance.
Despite these limitations, the “hybrid wireless-optical broadband-access network” (WOBAN) 
project is set to investigate wireless mesh capabilities over standardised PONs [16]. The 
wireless part of WOBAN has been gaining recently increasing attention, and early versions are 
being deployed as municipal access solutions to eliminate the wired drop to every wireless 

---