Evolution and Trends of Broadband Access Technologies and Fiber-Wireless Systems

This chapter provides the introduction to technical trends and market status of both broadband wireline and wireless access networks and also summarizes the technology evolution of fiber and wireless networks. The technical introduction on broadband wireline access networks includes xDSL, coaxial cable and hybrid fiber coax (HFC), and various passive optical network (PON) architectures. The current global deployments on broadband wireline access are also presented here. As for the study on the broadband wireless access technologies, this chapter addresses the technical evolution path for dominant Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and mobile communications systems. As wireless and wireline technologies converge and the dividing lines become less clear, the common denominator will be optical fiber. In this chapter, technology synergies and recent research activities are also described for the integrated fiber-wireless access networks.