Dependable Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) Access Networks and Their Role in a Sustainable Third Industrial Revolution Economy

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), broadband access networks enable the emergence of new business models, processes, inventions, as well as improved goods and services. In fact, broadband access is viewed as a so-called general purpose technology (GPT) that has the potential to fundamentally change how and where economic activity is organized. In this paper, we focus on the implications of the emerging Third Industrial Revolution (TIR) economy, which goes well beyond current austerity measures, and has recently been officially endorsed by the European Commission as the economic growth roadmap toward a competitive low carbon society by 2050. This roadmap has been receiving an increasing amount of attention by other key players, e.g., the Government of China most recently. More specifically, we describe a variety of advanced techniques to render converged bimodal fiber-wireless (FiWi) broadband access networks dependable, including optical coding based fiber fault monitoring techniques, localized optical redundancy strategies, wireless extensions, and availability-aware routing algorithms, to improve their reliability, availability, survivability, security, and safety. Next, we elaborate on how the resultant dependent FiWi access networks can be exploited to enhance the dependability of other critical infrastructures of our society, most notably the future smart power grid and its envisioned electric transportation, by means of probabilistic analysis, co-simulation, and experimental demonstration.