Photonic Home Area Networks

Indoor networks have to carry a large variety of services, with widely differing needs regarding, e.g., bandwidth, quality of service, and reliability. They have to support both wirebound and wireless connectivity, at low costs and low energy consumption levels. This paper gives an overview of trends and recent research results in the area of photonic solutions for indoor networks. It reviews the architectures, economics, and techniques for converged optical fiber indoor networks, which are cost- and energy-efficient, and compares them with current copper-based solutions. Particular attention is given to high-capacity multimode (plastic) optical fiber techniques, radio-over-fiber techniques, techniques for providing capacity on demand, and optical wireless communication techniques. An evolution perspective is outlined how the growing indoor communication demands can be met by introducing these powerful techniques and network architectures.