extending the metro edge through the air - the opportunities and the challenges

摘要

While there exist serious atmospheric impediments to reliable optical wireless communication, highly reliable systems that are compatible with carrier grade reliability (five 9's) can be engineered with the current technology by reducing the maximum length of the air links to accommodate the worst atmospheric conditions for the area and by setting up alternative paths for every customer in the optical wireless network. The short links in an optical wireless network will not seriously impact the usefulness of the optical wireless technology as an optical access solution in the metro because of three reasons: 1) the average inter-building distances in a typical metro ranges from 50-200 meters; 2) Majority of commercial buildings are within one mile of a fiber; 3) optical signals can be relayed by transit nodes to reach a longer distance. Whether optical wireless technology will be successful in the highly competitive metro market for the most part depends on how quickly end customers will adopt it. Therefore, it is very important to deal effectively with perceptions of unreliability, concerns of health hazard, and general unfamiliarity of the solution among IT managers. Those non-technical issues are just as important to future optical wireless service providers as key technical challenges discussed in this paper.