ALPHA - Architectures for flexible photonics home and
access networks                                                                            

In a not too distant future, broadband services will require capacities of above 1 Gb/s with higher requirements on quality-of-service (QoS) than today’s applications. Current access networks and, in particular, today’s home networks are not prepared for such services. The ALPHA project addresses these issues. 

ALPHA is a large-scale integrating project with 17 partners and 16.5 million euro total funding within Framework Programme 7 of the European Commission. ALPHA addresses the challenges of building the future access and in-building networks with support of 2G/3G/B3G transport. Key issues include increasing the throughput of the networks, automating the networks to minimize operational expenses and maximize user-friendliness, and integrating wired and wireless technologies both in the home and the access. The network of tomorrow should be prepared for services like next-generation HD and 3D television – and for services that we cannot even imagine today. 

Project approach

The research activities within ALPHA include technical, economical and experimental studies for improved transmission and shared-access techniques for various optical fibres (silica and plastic), integration of 2G/3G/B3G transport, traffic engineering at different layers, as well as control and management.  

An essential part of the project is to experimentally validate close-to-mature technologies in laboratory tests and field trials by exploiting the various test facilities at different partners. One such example is a plastic optical fibre (POF) installation colocated with the electrical wiring in the apartment of a test user, see figure 1. 

Figure 1: The upper photo is from the installation phase with POF on the floor. The old and the new power outlets are seen on the table. The lower photo shows the final result – the POF is hidden for the tenant, but broadband is available at each power outlet in the apartment. 

Key results

Some of the main achievements of ALPHA are the following:

• Optical access networks: Passive and active optical networks (PON and AON) are compared technically and economically. Next generation optical access solutions leading to much higher throughput and more dynamics than today are being developed within the project.  

• Control and management: Using modifications of the UPnP protocol, QoS is provided in a home environment. A GMPLS control plane is being adapted to include the access domain, and the QoS-parameters will be bridged across the residential gateway.

• Multi-mode fibre: There is a large installed base of multi-mode fibre in the field, for instance in campus networks. New modulation schemes and transmission solutions are being developed and successfully tested in order to increase the lifetime of these fibre plants.

• Plastic optical fibre (POF): POF is a promising candidate for the future wired home network, and equipment with POF-interfaces is developed to reduce the amount of optical-electrical conversions. Much effort is put into practical POF installations. 

• Radio over fibre (RoF): RoF technology can improve the coverage of mobile telephony basestations. A RoF over a passive optical network was developed within the project, with a single optical infrastructure used for both RoF and FTTH access.

• Femtocells: Another solution for providing mobile telephony coverage is using a simplified basestation - a femtocell. It functions over IP and covers an apartment. ALPHA develops network solutions guaranteeing error-free functioning of the femtocell over the access and home networks.

Outlook

By the end of the project, in December 2010, all the highlights above will have been demonstrated in one or more of the test facilities in ALPHA. The results, experiences, and standardisation efforts from the project are expected to lead to an accelerated deployment of optical access and in-building networks in Europe.