Integrated optical/wireless networking

The explosive growth of fiber bandwidth is revolutionizing telecommunications throughout the world. The end-user bandwidth demand is also increasing concurrently. To run fiber to each end user is impossible. To cope with this situation, hybrid fiber radio (HFR) and hybrid free space optics (FSO)/RF are viable solutions to provide survivable access networks for the end-users and business access. It provides the solutions for the vital challenges under diverse atmospheric conditions by offering "all weather survivable" links, pushing the high bandwidth backbone network towards the distribution access point. This case study presents the HFR concepts and its various networking scenarios. Here we want to study the synergy effect based on the integration of broadband wireless and optical networks that will lead to a flexible access network structure, capable of offering broadband mobility functions to the telecommunication users. This time frame allows us to consider some quite promising state-of-the-art technologies and enables us to evaluate the possible implementation of the integrated optical/wireless access networks.