OMEGA ICT project: Towards convergent Gigabit home networks

Abstract

Gigabit home networks represent a key technology to make the Future Internet success a reality. The OMEGA European project [1] aims to define and demonstrate such networks. Consumers will require networks to be simple to install, without the need of any new wire. To achieve this, gigabit radio links and wireless optics communications will provide wireless connectivity within the home and its surroundings. Power-line communications potentially combined with robust RF will provides a home backbone "without new wires." To make this network ubiquitous, seamless and robust a technologyindependent MAC layer will ensure its global control and provide connectivities to any number of devices the user wishes to connect to it in any room in a house or a Oat. In order to make this vision come true, substantial progress is required in the fields of optical-wireless and RF physical layers, in protocol design, and in systems architectures.

Indoor optical wireless communications: recent developments and future challenges

“…Figure 2 shows the approach being used in the OMEGA project. This is a large project focused on Gigabit Home Access Networks, including work on protocols, security and different types of physical layer [7]. In this case an angle diversity transmitter [12] is used.…”

“…Visible Light Communications (VLC) originated in Japan [4], with the Visible Light Communications Consortium (VLCC) [5] playing a major role in its development. There is also a standardisation effort [6]and work within Europe [7,8]. In this case OW augments other functions, and the ability to add communications to illumination with little extra cost is attractive.…”

Bidirectional gigabit ethernet optical wireless communications system for home access networks

“…Such a home access network (HAN) should be capable of delivering multiple data services at rates up to gigabits per second. The aim of the OMEGA project [1] is to realise a HAN system utilising various high-speed data transmission techniques including radio-frequency (RF) [2], power line (PLC) [3,4], visible light (VLC) [5,6] and infra-red communications (IRC). In the OMEGA HAN, different communication technologies are interconnected and seamlessly controlled by an intelligent media access control (MAC) layer which will select one of these technologies according to the currently offered performance [7].…”

“…Incoming data from external data service provider is distributed to different locations of the house via PLC network and then delivered to the static and mobile users via a number of wireless RF or OW hotspots. Table 1 summarises the communications technologies in the OMEGA HAN and their specifications [1].…”

Initial techno-economic results for OMEGA home Gigabit networks

“…For example, the use case scenarios for future home networks require an overall network capacity up to the Gigabit per second (Gbps). Moreover in order to avoid inefficient and cumbersome solutions with coexistence problems as experienced today, the OMEGA project [1][2][3] integrates various appropriate technologies into a converged heterogeneous network, which meets the customer's demands with respect to quality of service (QoS), reliability, throughput, ubiquity, and self-configuration (Fig. 1).…”