Towards a Roadmap for Future Home Networking Systems: An Analytical Hierarchy Process Approach

Home Networking Systems (HNS) play a crucial role in achieving broadband service delivery to end users and are quickly becoming the next arena for telecom operators and companies. This emphasizes the need for a technology roadmap in order to address several key issues associated with the deployment of these systems. The present paper presents the results of the European project ICT-OMEGA road mapping effort for future HNS focusing on the most indicative and critical function, namely that of network extension. Taking into account the various social, economic and technological factors, three alternative technologies, namely the 802.11n, 60 GHz and Power Line Communications (PLC) have been ranked, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Based on a number of expert surveys, the technology value of each solution is calculated. The results indicate that PLC possesses the largest potential for delivering broadband services in the home environment but also underlines the need for hybrid solutions. The results also reveal various crucial aspects of HNS deployment which are related to current research and standardization activities. A sensitivity analysis is also performed to ascertain the reliability of the results.