Four parties have teamed up to participate in the European research project "Converged Optical-Mobile Access Networks with Dynamic and Efficient Resource allocation" (COMANDER), funded under the Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP) action call FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IAPP.
COMANDER brings together experts from industry and academia with the long-term goal of delivering a cost-efficient design for next generation networks that include both wired and wireless connectivity. The investigators would like to merge the currently distinct optical and wireless infrastructures into a unified network capable of offering the best of both worlds: the stability and ultra-high speeds of fiber-optic networks with the agility and flexibility of wireless transmission.
In an attempt to “revolutionize the networks of the future,” the project COMANDER will investigate the convergence of the optical networks with ultra-high-speed 60-GHz wireless signals that will boost wireless connectivity to 1 Gbps per user.
To achieve this goal, the COMANDER project employs a novel design that builds upon the radio-over-fiber approach and proposes ways to overcome its existing limitations. At the end of the project, COMANDER expects to deliver a novel remote radio access unit module design and prototype device that will offer simultaneously 60-GHz wireless connectivity and fiber to the home (FTTH) services to the user’s premises.
In addition, the researchers want to go beyond architectural convergence by introducing novel dynamic resource allocation schemes based on intelligent medium-transparent media access control protocols and advanced network coding techniques that will enable optimization of fiber and wireless channels.
The scale and diversity of the vision calls for interdisciplinary cooperation across the fields of optical communications, wireless engineering, protocol design, network coding, and simulation. COMANDER plans to achieve that through collaboration and exchange of research personnel between the project partners.
The four project partners are Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece; Technical University of Berlin in Germany; PhoeniX Software B.V. in the Netherlands; and Iquadrat SA in Spain. As a group, the partners say they have complementary expertise in engineering, design, analysis, simulation, and experimentation to fulfill the project’s goals.
The project started officially last October and will run for four years.
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