IEEE Access special section editorial: optical wireless technologies for 5G communications and beyond

Wide bandwidth and dense spatial reuse are of extreme importance for future wireless communication networks, including 5G and beyond. In particular, these properties are important to enable future wireless networks to cope with the explosive increase in the demand for high data-rate communications. Optical wireless communications (OWC) is a promising technology for achieving this goal due to the abundant reusable license-free optical spectrum. This potential of OWC attracted significant global attention both from communications and optoelectronics viewpoints, and continues to do so

Integrated optical frequency comb for 5G NR Xhauls

: We experimentally demonstrate the use of optical frequency combs (OFCs), generated by a photonic integrated circuit (PIC), in a flexible optical distribution network based on fiber-optics and free-space optics (FSOs) links, aimed at the fifth generation of mobile network (5G) Xhauls. The Indium Phosphide (InP) monolithically integrated OFC is based on cascaded optical modulators and is broadly tunable in terms of operating wavelength and frequency spacing. Particularly, our approach relies on applying the PIC in a centralized radio access network (C-RAN) architecture, with the purpose of optically generating two low-phase noise mm-waves signals for simultaneously enabling a 12.5-km of single-mode fiber (SMF) fronthaul and a 12.5-km SMF midhaul, followed by a 10-m long FSO fronthaul link. Moreover, the demonstrator contemplates two 10-m reach 5G wireless access networks operating in the 26 GHz band, i.e. over the frequency range 2 (FR2) from the 5G NR standard. The proposed integrated OFC-based 5G system performance is in accordance to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 15 requirements, achieving a total wireless throughput of 900 Mbit/s

Modelling, Dimensioning and Optimization of 5G Communication Networks, Resources and Services

This reprint aims to collect state-of-the-art research contributions that address challenges in the emerging 5G networks design, dimensioning and optimization. Designing, dimensioning and optimization of communication networks resources and services have been an inseparable part of telecom network development. The latter must convey a large volume of traffic, providing service to traffic streams with highly differentiated requirements in terms of bit-rate and service time, required quality of service and quality of experience parameters. Such a communication infrastructure presents many important challenges, such as the study of necessary multi-layer cooperation, new protocols, performance evaluation of different network parts, low layer network design, network management and security issues, and new technologies in general, which will be discussed in this book

PaFiR : Particle Filter Routing – a predictive relaying scheme for UAV-assisted IoT communications in future innovated networks

Increasing urbanization, smart cities and other cutting-edge technologies offer the prospect of providing more functions to benefit citizens by relying on the substantial data processing and exchange capabilities now possible. This can generate significant unpredictable and unbalanced data loads for the bearing IoT network to support its application and service demands. We thus propose a wireless routing scheme designed to use the Particle Filter algorithm to empower portable smart devices with intelligent capacities for the radio communication system. This facilitates the offloading of traffic from traditional wireless networks and enables the IoT system to adopt unmanned aerial vehicles, thus also offering further innovation to flying network platforms. The proposed PaFiR routing protocol offers the network more scalability, tolerance and resilience, to achieve the goal of smart relaying. Simulation results that demonstrate the routing algorithm designed offers excellent performance when compared with existing wireless relaying schemes. It provides delivery ratios that are improved by up to 40% without unmanageable increases in latency or overheads

High-Altitude Configuration of Non-Terrestrial Telecommunication Network using Optical Wireless Technologies

Non-terrestrial communication technologies will become a key component for the development of future 6th generation (6G) networks. Potentials, implementation prospects, problems and solutions for non-terrestrial telecommunications remain open areas for future research. The article discusses the use of millimeter and optical wavelengths in various configurations of multilevel space communications using LEO satellites, stratospheric platforms and unmanned repeaters. The comparison of the capacity of the Shannon channel for various multi-level scenarios of the satellite communication line is carried out. The directions of research are analyzed to ensure the continuity of communication, adaptation to weather conditions, and achieving a throughput of up to 100 Gbit/s