NeTS-NR: Spectrum Teleportation: A Fiber-Aided Wireless Architecture

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Current trends in network deployment show that there is high asymmetry in fiber infrastructure and in available wireless spectrum. In particular, indoor business and educational environments, as well as dense urban areas, are generally richly endowed with heavily underutilized fiber, but their wireless resources are challenged by limited energy, by interference and by severe wireless propagation issues. The current ad-hoc deployment of wireless routers, commonly termed "hot spots", is a means of exploiting this asymmetry by placing wireless traffic onto the wireline infrastructure in a very localized fashion. This project seeks to extend radically the concept of hotspots by providing aggressive harvesting of the signals in the wireless domain through the existing, underutilized, fiber infrastructure. The technical rationale is to reduce the range of wireless transmissions by making use of the fact that wireless devices in fiber-rich areas are physically close to fiber. Currently, this proximity to fiber is not exploited, since there are very few access points, such as base stations or wireless routers, for translating wireless signals onto the fiber. The project will consider the use of a large number of small, inexpensive points of access to the fiber. In particular, our project will investigate using fiber infrastructure in buildings to allow us, for the first time, to use effectively wireless spectrum at very high frequencies, such as 60 GHz, where propagation effects allow only very short ranges. The main outcomes of this effort will be to alleviate significantly issues of wireless resource contention and energy use, by reducing the range needed for wireless transmission in densely populated environments, and allowing wireless signals to be captured ubiquitously by the fiber plant. This research will help establishing new means providing cheap and simple access onto fiber for wireless energy harvesting.