Grid Reconfigurable Optical Wireless Network (GROW-Net) - A New Hybrid Optical Wireless Access Network Architecture

We propose a novel hybrid optical wireless access network architecture that is designed for highly populated metropolitan area. This hybrid access network consists of an optical grid network providing broadband backhauling, and many wireless mesh networks penetrating into the neighborhoods to provide low cost, ubiquitous links. This hybrid access network architecture is scalable and flexible enough to easily meet varying demands for bandwidth of end users: As bandwidth demand increases, the capacity of the hybrid access network can be upgraded by deploying more access points in the wireless mesh network until its performance begins to degrade due to high hop-counts. As the performance degrade occurs, additional fiber are deployed (or dark fibers activated) to enhance the overall network capacity. On the optical grid backhauling network, we propose a hierarchical loop routing protocol to enhance the routing efficiency. Intra-cell hybrid adaptive routing protocols and algorithms are proposed to achieve the optimum network performance provided by this hybrid access network.