Special Symposium on The Convergence of Wired and Wireless Services in In-Building and Access Networks

Our society depends ever more on fast and easily accessible information. Users want services which are more feature-rich and diversified, so communication networks have to provide wired as well as wireless services with growing capacity. Hence it is timely to organise a Symposium on the convergence of wired and wireless services, both in access networks and in-building networks.

In FTTH access networks, on top of the delivery of wired services wireless services may be overlaid by deploying radio-over-fiber techniques.

Inside buildings, there is a wide variety of separate networks for wired and wireless services. Each network is optimized for a specific service, which complicates network updates and the introduction of new services. These hurdles may be removed by integrating all services into a single network. Such a network may beneficially be realised with optical fiber, where next to the single-mode fiber also multimode silica or polymer optical fiber can be considered. Given the attractiveness of the latter fibers for easy installation at one hand, but their large modal dispersion on the other hand, special measures are needed to realise broadband delivery of wired and wireless services.

The Symposium will address recent research trends aiming at an efficient integration of wired and wireless services in access as well as in-building networks.