Cluster

FP7 Integrated Project (IP) OASE

The aim of the OASE project is the assessment and development of next-generation optical access (NG-OA) network architectures and systems concepts for the “2020” timeframe, focusing particularly on European requirements. The OASE project will examine FTTH solutions based on four multidisciplinary approaches: regulatory, technical and financial aspects, and business models.

OASE will achieve the following objectives:

• Study current and future requirements for NG-OA networks from economic, business, operational and regulatory Europe-centric perspectives,
• Identify possible network architectures, and employ a set of energy-efficiency metrics and models to analyse their suitability, as well as assess the most appropriate migration strategies,
• Identify network technologies that may be employed by using relevant cost and technical factors,
• Examine the interactions between businesses in an “open network” marketplace by studying how increased convergence may offer new value chains and business opportunities,
• Validate the findings of the comparative merits for the identified network architectures and technologies in a controlled environment via experimental testing.

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FP7 Integrated Project (IP) ALPHA

The ALPHA project addresses the challenges of building the future access and all types of in-building networks for home and office environments. The proposal supports the evolution towards a cognitive network by dynamically utilising the resources of an optical network infrastructure to support a heterogeneous environment of wired and wireless technologies.
The project investigates innovative architectural and transmission solutions based on the manifold of optical fibres (single-, multi-mode and plastic) as well as wireless technology to support both wired and wireless services in a converged network infrastructure. The focus is on using the newest physical layer achievements and adequate management and control algorithms to reach a yet unprecedented end-to-end provisioned capacity for access and in-building networks at a fraction of the price of today's technologies and to simultaneously include the transport of existing 2G/3G and Beyond 3G (B3G) signals whether they are Internet Protocol (IP) or non-IP-based.

The project starts with analysing the potential future bandwidth and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements which can be posed by future services in the scope of access and in-building networks such as Ultra HD Video, Local Storage Area Network, remote medical applications and others, and mapping those requirements into network specifications. The questions on the best applicable media, necessity for optical layer dynamics, compatibility of network types at the physical layer, foundations for better QoS provisioning and embedding of 2G/3G and B3G signals into the networks are then addressed within the project.

The project pursues experimental validations of close-to-maturity technologies in laboratory tests and field trials by intensively exploiting the three project testbeds. The project also includes long-term research activities targeting to improve the existing technologies, and follows an intensive dissemination and standardisation strategy.

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FP7 Network of Excellence (NoE) BONE

This Virtual Centre of Excellence on Access Networks aims to provide a forum for exchange and consolidation of the latest research and development on access systems that use optics to provide true-broadband connections to fixed and mobile users. The centre considers a number of different access technologies that make use of optics such as TDM-PONs, WDM-PONs, Radio-over-Fibre, Free-Space-Optics or xDSL-over-fibre. Within the project six joint activities are current active:

1) Hybrid optical wireless networks
2) Techno-economic analysis of optical access networks
3) Secure OCDMA based PONs
4) Millimeter-wave radio over fiber
5) Quality of Service in PONs
6) Techniques for colour-less optical network units

In addition to enable novel research results through the collaboration of partners, the Centre all aims influence the research being carrier out by amalgamating research agendas of partners to reach a consensus on the challenges and directions of access research and by proving opportunities for the mobility of researchers to perform benchmarking activities across technologies.

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FP7 Integrated Project (IP) OMEGA

Gigabit Home Access Networks are a pivotal technology to be developed if the EU Vision of the Future Internet is to be realised. Consumers will require such HANs to be simple to install, without any new wires, and easy enough to use so that information services running on the HAN will be just another utility, as, for instance, electricity, water and gas are today.
The OMEGA HAN is centered round the needs of the user: gigabit RF and optical links, combined with more robust wide-area RF and visible-light communications will provide wireless connectivity within and the home and its surroundings. Combined with power-line communications this provides a home backbone without new wires. A technology-independent MAC layer will control this network and provide services as well as connectivity to any number of devices the user wishes to connect to it in any room in a house/apartment, and further, this MAC layer will allow the service to follow the user from device to device.

In order to make this vision come true, substantial progress is required in the fields of optical-wireless and RF physical layers, in protocol design, and in systems architectures. For OMEGA, an interdisciplinary team from leading institutes and companies in this broad range of technologies has been assembled. OMEGA will provide a substantial consumer pull for next-generation broadband by enabling the sharing of large-date user-generated content, which will, in turn, raise the expectation for higher data rates. Also, at the same time, a push from service providers will take place, as they see the possibility of delivering new high-bandwidth services to the user throughout the home.

OMEGA will present significant market opportunities for all the EU actors in the communications industry, but most importantly empower citizens by offering access to novel emotional experiences while addressing ageing, isolation, and health challenges, and thus making an important contribution to the vision of FP7.

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FP7 STREP project SARDANA 

SARDANA (Scalable Advanced Ring-based Passive Dense Access Network Architecture) objective is to build a Network of the Future in the access domain to bring the true broadband communications to the highest number of users, unlimitedly at no extra cost, in and beyond the so called next-generation Fiber-to-the-Home networks. SARDANA, following the acronym, features:

• Scalable: Sardana is able to serve more than 1000 users with symmetrical 300 Mbit/s per user, spread along distances up to 100 km, at 10Gbit/s, in a flexible way.
• Advanced: to reach the project goals, a series of innovations are proposed and implemented:
   - Adoption and adaptation of new opto-electronic technologies, like reflective semiconductor optical amplifier, remotely pumped fiber amplification, wavelength shifting, etc.
   - Signal processing and communication techniques, like orthogonal optical modulation formats to reuse the same wavelength in down- and up-stream, non-linear electronic equalization of the different optical impairments present, and hybrid domain signal multiplexing (wavelength and time domain, routing the optical packets without collisions or delays).
• Ring-based passive: the network topology is hybrid with a central WDM ring, to offer instant communication protection in case of fiber cut, plus TDM single-fiber trees to the homes. In between, the Remote Nodes perform wavelength add&drop routing and optical amplification, although being fully passive. Strict passiveness is preserved in the external fiber plant.
• Dense Access Network Architecture: related to the concept of the user density in an area; it can range from a rural scenario at one hundred Km to an urban scenario with several thousand homes.

SARDANA will set an evolutionary path for current G/E-PON and incorporate functionalities of metropolitan networks, envisaging access-metro convergence.
During the project live, a Sardana Network demonstrator will be built, engineered and multi-layer operated; its main features will be also demonstrated in a field trial, delivering new generation bidirectional services to residential users.

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FP7 Integrated Project (IP) SARDANA: