Design and Analysis of Wireless-Optical Broadband Access Networks (WOBAN)

The growing customer demands for bandwidth-intensive services are accelerating the need to design an efficient "Last Mile" access network in a cost-effective manner. Traditional "Quad-Play" applications (which refer to a bundle of services with voice, video, Internet, and wireless) and premium rich-media applications (e.g., multimedia, interactive gaming, and metaverse) need to be delivered over the access network to the end users in a satisfactory and economical way. Thus, besides its enormous transport capacity, today's access infrastructure should bring operational efficiencies, namely mobility and untethered convenience to end users. Hence, this dissertation proposes and investigates a novel hybrid network paradigm - wireless-optical broadband access network (WOBAN) - a combination technology of high-capacity optical access and untethered wireless access.