RECENT ADVANCES IN OPTICAL WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS FOR 6G, WLANS AND BEYOND
Wireless Access Technology in FTTR Next
Generation Home Networks: An Overview
Tianhai Chang, Xiaoshu Si, Xiang Wang, Yunman Chen, Shuang Gan, and Giuseppe Caire
Abstract
Fiber to the Room (FTTR) is an evolution of the
Fiber to the Home (FTTH) technology that relies
on an in-home passive optical network and WiFi6
access points in each room to deliver Gb/s data
rates with consistent and ubiquitous quality of
service to residential users. This article examines
FTTR scenarios and system design challenges, with
a particular emphasis on the wireless access seg-
ment. Specifically, we address automatic power
control, automatic channel allocation, automatic
access scheme selection, seamless roaming, and
low-power RF design. Measurements from a test-
bed implemented in a real home environment are
also presented to illustrate the performance and
design trade-offs of FTTR technology. We also pro-
vide insight into a possible evolution of the current
FTTR technology toward a cell-free architecture,
where conventional access points are replaced
by centrally processed radio units, and discuss the
synchronization requirements and changes to the
wireless medium access control protocol necessary
to implement such an approach.
Introduction
The demand for more and more broadband
access in the home is growing worldwide. For
example, by the end of January 2022, the FTTH
penetration rate in China was 94 percent, the
absolute number of FTTH connections in the
country was about 960 million, and the aver-
age fixed Internet connection speed was 146.62
Mb/s. Another survey [1] shows that about 68
percent of households have subscribed to a 200
Mb/s package, but more than 76 percent of them
do not achieve the promised speed due to poor
coverage of in-home wireless access. This has
become a major pain point for customers and
service providers. The reason for this “wireless
bottleneck” is that homes are typically served by a
single Optical Network Terminal (ONT) co-locat-
ed with a WiFi wireless access point.
In 2019, the European Telecommunications
Standards Institute (ETSI) launched a new Indus-
try Specification Group (ISG) F5G (ETSI, 2019) to
explore the 5th generation fixed network, charac-
terized by ultra-high data rates ( 1 Gb/s), extensive
optical connectivity (all-fiber), and deep service
experience [2]. Fiber-To-The-Room (FTTR) is one of
the most important emerging F5G scenarios, where
the optical network is extended to each room of a
Digital Object Identifier: Tianhai Chang, Xiaoshu Si, Xiang Wang, Yunman Chen, and Shuang Gan are with Huawei Technologies, China;
10.1109/MWC.002.2300024 Giuseppe Caire is with Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.
44 1536-1284/23/$25.00 © 2023 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA. Downloaded on May 02,2024 at 20:29:34 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
household equipped with multiple ONTs. FTTR is
based on optical technology for the optical home
networking segment and on IEEE 802.11ax (WiFi6)
for the wireless access segment [3]. The optical
technology provides a shared capacity of up to 10
Gb/s downstream and up to 2.5 Gb/s upstream.
Such an optical backhaul network enables new
levels of tight coordination between multiple APs.
FTTR is a point-to-multipoint (P2MP) topology
consisting of a master ONT, one or more edge
ONTs, an optical distribution network (ODN), and
a home cloud management platform (home CMP).
The Master ONT serves as the gateway between
the carrier and the home networks. The Edge
ONTs create a sort of cellular system, where each
room is a cell, and provide wireless access to home
user devices (“users” for brevity) via WiFi6. The
ODN consists of fiber optic links and optical split-
ters. The Home CMP is an application running in
a remote cloud that manages the FTTR network in
an automated manner. FTTR defines a new chan-
nel between the optical network and the WiFi6
network to monitor user performance and status.
Failures in the home network can be detected
by this platform and handled through a dedicat-
ed management channel, allowing operators to
extend their business reach into home networks.
The coexistence of multiple ONTs on an FTTR
network presents several issues and opportunities
in terms of interference management, resource
allocation, handovers, and RF design. Some of
these are worth mentioning:
• The user-ONT association problem to achieve
fair and balanced allocation of WiFi resources
among all users.
• Co-channel and adjacent channel interference
management through power control and new
antenna pattern design to cope with dense
ONT deployments.
• Fast and seamless roaming in FTTR networks,
where roaming events are more frequent than
in typical home networks.
• The potential for lower cost and more compact
RF designs. Since each ONT essentially cov-
ers only its own room, lower transmit power
and receiver sensitivity compared to conven-
tional WiFi are sufficient to achieve the target
performance. This enables highly integrated RF
design on a single semiconductor technology.
• Centralized processing of remote radios. The
presence of the high-speed optical network
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2023
 provides the opportunity to replace the edge
ONTs with simpler, centrally processed remote
antenna units.
The layout of a real FTTR system testbed is shown
in Fig. 1. The testbed is set up in a real home environ-
ment (a 130 square meter house) in Wuhan, China,
based on Huawei FTTR product and Huawei P40
smartphones operating on channel 36 with 80MHz
bandwidth. This experiment considers downlink
UDP streams. Users are connected to different Edge
ONTs. A computer is connected to the Master ONT
and the test data is routed from the Master ONT to
the Edge ONTs through the home fiber network and
finally to the users through the WiFi6 air interface. It
is important to note that the numerical results pre-
sented in this article (Fig. 2, Table 1, and Fig. 3) are
obtained from tests performed on this testbed.
The aforementioned design challenges/oppor-
tunities have been explored in the literature,
particularly in the context of enterprise (or “cam-
pus”) wireless local area networks. For example,
[4] proposes a method to optimize user-to-ONT
+
association, assuming that all WiFi users are treated FIGURE 1. The experimental testbed of an FTTR home network used in this
equally. The method proposed in [5] introduces an article. The blue and orange trajectories refer to the handover experiment
association approach that matches each user with reported in Fig. 3.
the most appropriate access point depending on its
QoS profile. For the interference mitigation prob-
lem, the co-channel and adjacent channel inter-
ference can be mitigated by lowering the transmit
power. On the other hand, as the transmit power
becomes to low, this will leave holes in the cover-
age. Therefore, on-line optimization algorithms are
required to adapt the FTTR system to each spe-
cific home configuration. Regarding the problem
of handover acceleration, the author in [6] inves-
tigated solutions based on the 802.11 k/v proto-
col. In [7], a network-assisted roaming architecture FIGURE 2. Throughput test results on the FTTR
for controller-less WiFi networks is proposed, and platform of Fig. 1 considered in this article.
experiments based on an implemented system pro-
totype show a significant reduction in handover
latency. On the RF design side, [8] suggests that RF design for the FTTR system. Then we present
the lower transmit power requirements for cover- the cell-free concept and its applicability to the
age in a multi-ONT architecture allow for simpler, FTTR scenario. Our final remarks and conclusions
cheaper, and more integrated RF module designs. are given in the final section.
A general trend in wireless cellular networks is
toward a centralized radio access network (C-RAN) Fttr gIgAbIt Full coverAge technology
architecture, in which base stations are replaced Today, more and more devices are accessing the
by remote radio units whose signals are jointly pro- Internet over a WiFi network. F5G [2] presents
cessed at a centralized location that implements the 14 typical commercial application scenarios for
protocol stack in software running on general-pur- Gigabit networks. These cases show a clear trend
pose programmable machines (CPUs and GPUs). of increasing data rate and more stringent delay
The centralized processing can handle multi-user requirements. For example, highly interactive VR
interference through physical layer precoding (in services can require up to 1 Gb/s data rates and
the downlink) and linear interference mitigation (in less than 10ms latency. Meanwhile, energy con-
the uplink), according to various algorithms devel- sumption has become an important issue, driv-
oped in the multi-user MIMO and cell-free litera- en by climate change concerns and rising energy
ture and widely experimented and implemented bills. FTTR has the potential to address all of these
in practice (e.g., see https://www.artemis.com/). issues at once in the context of home networking.
At the same time, the virtualized software-defined The FTTR architecture allows each ONT to
physical layer supports standard updates and reduc- operate at relatively low power. While the exact
es deployment and operational costs. Although not transmit power level may vary slightly due to regu-
yet standardized, a similar centralized architecture is lations in different countries, as a general guideline,
briefly discussed in this article as an attractive per- the transmit power is generally between 0 and 20
spective for future FTTR evolution. dBm. However, the actual transmit power is opti-
The rest of the article is organized as follows: mized by an appropriate power control algorithm
The next section introduces some aspects of depending on the configuration of the particular
optimizing the FTTR system to achieve full giga- home. The role of power control is to ensure cov-
bit coverage. We then analyze some candidate erage of the entire house while keeping interfer-
solutions to improve roaming in FTTR networks. ence between devices operating in different rooms
Following that we discuss aspects of antenna and at an acceptable level.

IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2023 45

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA. Downloaded on May 02,2024 at 20:29:34 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 Phases 11k/v Ref [7] Ref. [7] + 11r ERF + 11r
scanning 300 ms 50 ms 50 ms —
authentication 20 ms 20 ms
re-association 20 ms 20 ms 40 ms 40 ms
four-way handshake 40 ms 40 ms
In total 380 ms 130 ms 90 ms 40 ms
TABLE 1. Packet delay in different roaming schemes.
The experimental results shown in Fig. 2 are
obtained from the testbed mentioned earlier. In
this test, each Edge ONT has an associated user in
the same room. There is no user associated with
the Master ONT.
As shown in Fig. 2, power optimization can
improve FTTR network throughput. High power
may ensure a high data rate, but it brings severe
interference. In contrast, using optimized low power
can ensure a reasonable data rate in each room
while reusing the channel in multiple rooms simul-
taneously, resulting in a higher overall throughput. In
particular, Fig. 2 compares the throughput achieved
by transmitting at high power (20dBm), medium
power (10dBm), and low power (0dBm).
Interestingly, WiFi6 has new features such as
Overlapping Basic Service Sets (OBSS) and BSS
coloring that support spatial reuse [3]. This includes
not only adjusting the transmit power of the ONT,
but also the interference sensitivity threshold to
allow devices to transmit simultaneously without
significant contention (collisions) due to mutual
interference. To achieve good coverage through-
out the home, the signal from edge ONTs located
in different rooms must overlap, otherwise there
may be some gaps in the transition areas. OBSS
allows access points to use a “color” to uniquely
identify the network. If other traffic is detected on
the channel that does not have the same color as
the local network, the devices can ignore it and
continue transmitting.
A related issue is load balancing and optimal
user-ONT association. Users may have multiple
association options with different signal strength
and load status. Currently, user association mainly
depends on the received signal strength indica-
tor (RSSI). Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio
(SINR) and Packet Error Rate (PER) should also be
considered in the association process. In addition,
in many situations, the RSSI from different ONTs
to a given user can be quite similar. Therefore,
coordinated network-wide association schemes
that also consider load balancing between ONTs
are particularly critical to achieving good perfor-
mance. The centralized coordination architecture
of FTTR allows data to be collected in real time and
an interference graph of the network to be con-
structed so that appropriate association algorithms
can be performed. Such system optimization can
be formulated as a Network Utility Maximization
(NUM) problem for dynamic resources and sched-
uling. The form of the network utility function can
be defined to enforce a desired notion of fairness
(e.g., proportional fairness).
In short, the FTTR architecture provides the
ability to perform online network self-optimization
through power control, spatial reuse, and clever
user-ONT association. The particular optimization
46
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA. Downloaded on May 02,2024 at 20:29:34 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
algorithm can be implemented in the master ONT
and is completely transparent to the users.
FTTR Insensitive Roaming Technology
As previously anticipated, the dense deployment
of Edge ONTs will result in frequent handovers
with portable devices. Roaming involves reassoci-
ating the user device with a new access point. This
process is generally associated with high delay
and jitter, and typically results in video stream-
ing stalls or video call disconnects. The handover
delay is primarily due to four phases: scanning,
authentication, reassociation, and four-way hand-
shake. 3GPP recommends a packet delay bud-
get of 100ms for voice and live streaming, and a
packet delay budget of 50ms for real-time gam-
ing. The traditional four phases do not meet these
requirements. For this reason, FTTR advocates the
concept of insensitive roaming, where handover
procedures are designed to achieve the desired
target performance for interactive services. The
IEEE 802.11k/v protocols define a complete
roaming interaction procedure that measures
information from neighboring ONTs and manages
the roaming transition for mobile users. However,
the user-initiated polling procedure typically takes
hundreds of milliseconds for multichannel polling
[7}. In addition, incorrect roaming decisions can
result in low data rate.
Several approaches have been studied to reduce
the scanning latency. For example, [7] proposes
to periodically leave the associated channel, scan
other channels, and collect the scan results over
time. However, the FTTR architecture allows alter-
native and more efficient ways. The optical backhaul
network can be used to support parameter mea-
surements instead of channel scanning. Since edge
ONTs can cooperate with each other at high speed,
the master ONT can process the collected wireless
network information in a centralized manner. In [6],
the use of network extenders to collect data from
users is proposed. Inspired by this study, an extra
radio frequency module (ERF) can be installed in the
network to support the scanning and information
collection process. The ERF is controlled by the mas-
ter ONT to scan specific channels on behalf of the
ONTs or users by passively measuring (“sniffing”)
the WiFi network status.
In addition to RSSI, the ERFs can measure real-
time network status and statistics. Integrating all this
information at the master ONT and designing algo-
rithms that perform real-time network optimization
is a challenge that must be solved to achieve the
desired insensitive roaming. By modeling the roam-
ing decision as a Markov Decision Process (MDP)
[9], deep reinforcement learning can be used to
effectively improve the overall performance in the
presence of roaming and handovers. In the FTTR
scenario, the master ONT has a global and real-
time view of the home network. This is a novel and
promising scenario for the application of artificial
intelligence techniques.
For authentication and reassociation proce-
dures, the IEEE 802.11r standard defines a fast
and simplified handover interaction process that
is suitable for roaming in FTTR. The authentication,
association, and four-way handshake are great-
ly reduced to only four messages, and this has
been found to meet the requirements of insensi-
tive roaming. Table 1 collects some experimental
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2023
 results obtained on the mentioned experimental
platform, comparing the four technologies men-
tioned above, namely the IEEE 802.11k/v protocol
(denoted as 11k/v in the table), the scheme in [7],
denoted as Ref. [7] in the table, the scheme in [7]
together with the IEEE 802.11r protocol, denoted
as Ref. [7]+11r in the table, and the use of ERFs
together with the IEEE 802.11r protocol, denot-
ed as ERF+11r in the table. For this comparison,
each alternative was optimized with respect to
its own parameters to reflect a best case for the
corresponding protocol option. We observe that
the ERF scanning plus IEEE 802.11r method out-
performs all other methods and achieves a total
handover delay of about 40ms, which is within the
requirements of insensitive roaming.
We also conducted experiments to observe
the throughput variation during a single handover
event (Fig. 3) along the roaming trajectories shown
in Fig. 1. We compared the deep reinforcement
learning scheme mentioned in [9] with the con-
ventional IEEE 802.11k/v RSSI threshold -72dBm
scheme. It can be seen that the new scheme imple-
mented in [9] significantly outperforms the con-
ventional scheme during the handover transition,
maintaining a much higher throughput during the
handover. This is because instead of triggering the
handover in a reactive manner, when the RSSI has
dropped below threshold, reinforcement learning
is able to trigger the handover earlier in a proac-
tive manner. While these results are promising and
meet the requirements of current typical real-time
services, achieving insensitive roaming for future
mobile virtual reality services remains a subject of
intensive current research.
Fttr rF And AntennA desIgn
In this section, we consider the design challeng-
es of the radio frequency (RF) modules, includ-
ing the RF transceiver, front-end module (FEM),
and antennas. We begin by discussing the system
integration of the RF transceiver and the FEM.
In a traditional single ONT scenario, an RF trans-
ceiver with off-chip FEMs is the most common
solution. To achieve a good trade-off between
performance and cost, the power amplifier (PA)
is usually implemented in gallium arsenide (GaAs)
technology for higher output power (Pout), while
the low-noise amplifier (LNA) and switch are
implemented in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technol-
ogy for lower cost. To meet the linearity require-
ments (< 40dB EVM) for WiFi6 signaling with
modulation orders up to very large constellations
(1024-QAM), the PA is typically biased in Class
A mode, which means high power consumption.
To overcome this problem, a Doherty PA with
digital predistortion (DPD) can be used [10]. This
is a promising technique for future larger MIMO
arrays. However, all of the above FEMs are multi-
chip module (MCM) solutions, resulting in a very
low integration level.
In contrast, the lower TX Pout and RX sensitivity
requirement in FTTR allow for a fully integrated
implementation of RF and FEM on a single chip
using the same CMOS process. Highly integrated
RF transceivers are already commercially available
with an average Pout that can easily reach 0dBm,
which is enough to drive the off-chip FEM. Recent-
ly, a fully integrated two-band 4  4 RF transceiver
including eight on-chip FEMs with medium-level
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2023
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA. Downloaded on May 02,2024 at 20:29:34 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
FIGURE 3. The variation of throughput during a
single handover event.
Pout was proposed in [8] excluding digital front-
end blocks.
Another important aspect of FTTR RF design
is the antenna radiation pattern. The FTTR scenar-
io requires antenna patterns that are significantly
different from the classic omnidirectional design
used in single-ONT home networks. As noted ear-
lier, the transmit power of the edge ONTs cannot
be reduced beyond a certain level to avoid gaps
in coverage. Then, inter-ONT interference can be
significantly reduced at the RF level by properly
designing reconfigurable antennas with adaptive
radiation patterns (e.g., to direct transmit power in
desired directions while creating some nulls in other
directions). In most cases, the Edge ONTs in each
room are located against the wall, so 360° azimuth
coverage is not necessary. This allows some direc-
tional antenna gain to be produced in that cover-
age angle. In addition to the radiation pattern, the
polarization can also be exploited and designed to
be reconfigurable so that the antennas of adjacent
Edge ONTs can be set to orthogonal polarizations
for interference suppression. In our testbed, we
achieved polarization-based interference suppres-
sion of up to 15 dB, resulting in 30 percent through-
put increase (validated by testbed measurements).
Simultaneous pattern and polarization reconfigu-
rability is a non-trivial challenge in antenna design.
Therefore, there is a trade-off between performance
and implementation complexity. Figures 4 and 5
show examples of the RF subsystem and reconfigu-
rable antenna patterns, respectively.
A final consideration concerns the use of
millimeter waves. Driven by the ever-increasing
demand for higher data rates, the very large band-
width available at millimeter and sub-THz bands
will be required for 4K/8K video transmission [11].
For these very high frequencies, the presence of
the optical home network in the FTTR system pro-
vides an ideal opportunity to move processing
directly into the optical domain using RF photonics
technology [12]. This, however, remains an area of
open and intense research.
Fttr remote rF technology And
cell-Free ArchItecture
Multiuser MIMO is arguably one of the key trans-
formative ideas that has shaped the last 15 years
of theoretical research and ultimately had a very
significant impact on actual system design, from
the first information-theoretic breakthrough by
Caire and Shamai [13] to the provisions in the
recent 5G and WiFi6 standards [3]. A success-
ful related concept is Marzetta’s Massive MIMO
[14]. This is based on the key idea that, thanks
to channel reciprocity and TDD operations, an
arbitrary number M of antennas at the infrastruc-
ture side (base stations) can be trained by a finite
47

FIGURE 4. The RF subsystem in an ONT.
FIGURE 5. An example of interference mitigation in FTTR by means of recon-
figurable antenna patterns. Each room has size 5m  3m.
number K of users by simultaneously transmitting
K orthogonal pilot signals in each time-frequency
channel coherence block. In general, the channel
coherence block is given by T  TcWc, where
Wc is the channel coherence bandwidth and Tc
is the channel coherence time. For typical indoor
low mobility scenarios relevant to the FTTR appli-
cation, T can easily be on the order of 2000 sym-
bols, while K can be on the order of 20 devices in
a household. It follows that the channel training
overhead, that is, the fraction K/T of symbols used
for channel training per coherence block, is very
small, and channel training consumes a negligible
fraction of the total throughput.
In MU-MIMO downlink, a vector x of K data
modulation symbols on each OFDM subcarrier
is simultaneously transmitted to K users by spatial
precoding. The transmitted signal vector from the
M ONT antennas is given by s = Fx, where F is
the precoding matrix as a function of the channel
matrix from the M ONT antennas to the K users.
It is known that when M is significantly larger than
K, as in massive MIMO, simple linear precoding
performs very close to the information-theoretic
capacity limit [14].
One problem with applying massive MIMO in
the FTTR scenario is that concentrating a large num-
ber of antennas in a single ONT (i.e., the master
ONT) does not solve the path loss problem due
to wall absorption and would result in an overly
complex and bulky ONT. On the other hand, the
high-speed optical data network in the FTTR archi-
tecture may allow the common processing of all
antennas of all ONTs in the network. In this case,
the edge ONTs are replaced by simpler radio units
(RUs), each equipped with a relatively small antenna
array of L elements, so that the total number of infra-
48
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA. Downloaded on May 02,2024 at 20:29:34 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
structure antennas M in the system (equal to L times
the number of RUs) is significantly greater than the
number of users K served simultaneously in any
given time-frequency block. In this way, the entire
network is reduced to a “giant” single cell with dis-
tributed antennas instead of a small cell per room.
Centralized processing of distributed antennas is
already widely advocated in outdoor cellular under
the name of cell-free massive MIMO networks.
With common processing, the RUs do not need
to implement the entire PHY/MAC protocol stack.
Instead, only the low-level PHY (including modu-
lation/demodulation, A/D conversion, and FFT/
IFFT OFDM processing) is implemented in the
RUs, while the remaining part of the MAC/PHY
stack, including channel estimation, MU-MIMO
precoding, channel coding, rate and power alloca-
tion, and scheduling, is implemented in the master
ONT. This partitioning conforms to the so-called
7.2 split as specified by 3GPP.
In the uplink direction, the received signals are
demodulated to baseband at each RU, A/D-con-
verted, and converted to the frequency domain via
FFT. The resulting frequency domain received sig-
nal blocks are sent over the optical network to the
central processor. In the downlink direction, the fre-
quency-domain coded modulation symbols for each
user served are sent along with the MU-MIMO pre-
coding coefficients, and the RU performs the pre-
coding (linear combining), OFDM modulation via
an IFFT, and transmits the resulting continuous-time
signals to its L antennas. Alternatively, the MU-MI-
MO precoding can be implemented at the master
ONT and the precoded signal is sent to the RUs. The
choice of architecture for the downlink depends on
the precoding method and the synchronization of
the RUs that must be achieved over the optical net-
work. In particular, sufficient carrier frequency and
symbol timing synchronization is required to achieve
coherent combining of the transmission from multi-
ple RUs. This imposes specific design constraints on
the optical network that need to be considered in
future system specifications.
The main benefits of such a cell-free architec-
ture in the FTTR context are:
• The mitigation of path loss and blocking effects
(especially harsh in a residential environment
due to walls between rooms) through the
inherent macro-diversity effect.
• The elimination of inter-ONT interference that
occurs when multiple ONTs operate on the
same channel, as previously discussed.
• The elimination of the unique association
between clients and ONTs, so that each client
operates as if it were connected to a single “vir-
tual” master ON.
• The elimination of the roaming and re-associa-
tion problem, which is a significant challenge
in the current multi-ONT architecture, as dis-
cussed previously.
However, the application of the cell-free
approach in the context of the FTTR scenario also
presents a number of non-trivial technical challeng-
es. First, as mentioned above, symbol-synchronous
uplink and downlink data transmission over the
fiber home network is required to achieve recipro-
cal uplink and downlink channels, including delays
between RUs and the master ONT on the optical
network. An alternative to synchronization over
the fiber is synchronization “over the air” at the
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2023
 cost of a very small signaling overhead, as ana-
lyzed for example in [15]. Furthermore, the bot-
tleneck represented by the fiber network must be
explicitly considered. In fact, the fiber must carry a
sufficiently high data rate to support the signal sam-
ples between the RUs and the master ONT. This
data rate is typically much higher than the actual
user data rate to/from the users, since it includes
the PHY signal samples. In this context, intelligent
fronthaul compression techniques can be consid-
ered. Provided that the aforementioned challeng-
es can be overcome, the cell-free approach holds
great promise in the FTTR scenario, as it effectively
makes the entire network operation and optimiza-
tion much simpler and more efficient.
Conclusions
This article provides an overview of F5G FTTR tech-
nology with a focus on the wireless access seg-
ment. The main architectural features and target
performance requirements are presented. In par-
ticular, we discussed problems and current solu-
tion trends for network optimization in terms of
power control, spatial reuse, load balancing and
more generally maximizing network utility, roam-
ing insensitivity and delay reduction, opportunities
for higher levels of integration in the RF design,
and advanced reconfigurable antenna technology.
Results from a real-world testbed are presented,
showing the benefits of specific solutions and the
overall performance advantage of FTTR over tra-
ditional home networks. In addition, we provided
a glimpse into the possible future evolution of the
FTTR concept beyond the multiple ONT approach
toward cell-free massive MIMO.
Broadband Internet access to the home has
emerged during the recent Covid pandemic as a
primal need and a fundamental societal require-
ment. Overall, FTTR technology is poised to meet
user expectations in terms of QoS and quality of
experience.
References
[1] China Broadband Development Alliance, “The White Paper
of FTTR NewGeneration Home Gigabit All-Optical Net-
working,” [R/OL], http://www.chinabda.cn/article/252756,
2020-12-21/2021-05-24.
[2] ETSI, “Fifth Generation Fixed Network (F5G) Generation
Definition Release #1”, ETSI GR F5G 001, 12 2020, Version
1.1.1.
[3] E. Khorov, A. Kiryanov and A. Lyakhov, “IEEE 802.11ax: How
to Build High E ciency WLANs,” Proc. 2015 Int’l. Conf. Engi-
neering and Telecommun., 2015, doi:10.1109/EnT.2015, pp.
14-19.23
[4] W. Li et al., “AP Association for Proportional Fairness in Mul-
tirate WLANs,” IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking, vol. 22, no. 1,
Feb. 2014, pp. 191–202, doi: 10.1109/TNET.2013.2245145.
[5] A. Raschellà et al., “Quality of Service Oriented Access
Point Selection Framework for Large Wi-Fi Networks,” IEEE
Trans. Network and Service Management, vol. 14, no. 2, June
2017, pp. 441–55, doi: 10.1109/TNSM.2017.2678021.
[6] T. Adame et al., “Channel Load Aware AP / Extender
Selection in Home WiFi Networks Using IEEE 802.11k/v,”
IEEE Access, vol. 9, 2021, pp. 30,095–112, doi:10.1109/
ACCESS.2021.3059473.
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2023
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA. Downloaded on May 02,2024 at 20:29:34 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
[7] Y. Liao and L. Cao, “Practical Schemes for Smooth MAC
Layer Handoff in 802.11 Wireless Networks,” Proc. 2006
Int’l. Symposium on World of Wireless, Mobile and Multime-
dia Networks, 2006, p. 191.
[8] E. Lu et al., “10.4 A 4 4 Dual-Band Dual-Concurrent WiFi
802.11ax Transceiver with Integrated LNA, PA and T/R
Switch Achieving +20dBm 1024-QAM MCS11 Pout and
?43dB EVM Floor in 55nm CMOS,” Proc. 2020 IEEE Int’l.
Solid-State Circuits Conf., 2020, pp. 178–80, doi: 10.1109/
ISSCC19947.2020.9063127.
[9] Z. Han et al., “Artificial Intelligence-Based Handoff Manage-
ment for Dense WLANs: A Deep Reinforcement Learning
Approach,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, 2019, pp. 31,688–701.
[10] Y. H. Chee et al., “17.1 A Digitally Assisted CMOS
WiFi 802.11ac/11ax Front-End Module Achieving 12%
PA Efficiency at 20dBm Output Power With 160MHz
256-QAM OFDM Signal,” Proc. 2017 IEEE Int’l. Sol-
id-State Circuits Conf., 2017, pp. 292–93, doi: 10.1109/
ISSCC.2017.7870376.
[11] C. He et al., “Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communications
for Home NetWork in Fiber-to-the-Room Scenario,” Front
Inform. Technol. Electron. Eng., vol. 22, 2021, pp. 441–56,
https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.2000440.
[12] S. Iezekiel et al., “RF Engineering Meets Optoelectronics:
Progress in Integrated Microwave Photonics,” IEEE Micro-
wave Mag., vol. 16, no. 8, July 30 2015, pp. 28–45.
[13] G. Caire and S. Shamai, “On the Achievable Throughput
of a Multiantenna Gaussian Broadcast Channel,” IEEE Trans.
Inform. Theory, vol. 49, no. 7, 2003, pp. 1691–1706.
[14] T. L. Marzetta, “Noncooperative Cellular Wireless With
Unlimited Numbers of Base Station Antennas,” IEEE Trans.
Wireless Commun., vol. 9, no. 11), pp. 3590–3600.
[15] R. Rogalin et al., “Scalable Synchronization and Reciprocity
Cali- Bration for Distributed Multiuser MIMO,” IEEE Trans.
Wireless Commun., vol. 13, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1815–31.
Biographies
Tianhai Chang graduated from Dalian University of Technology
and joined Huawei, in 2000. He currently is a Chief Scientist
in Optical Network in Huawei Technology. His research area
includes all optical network structure and solution to access
network, indoor wireless, and FTTR.
X iaoshu S i received his Ph.D. from Wuhan University, after
which he joined Huawei, in 2011. His research interests include
PON architecture design, Wi-Fi MAC layer protocol design, and
Wi-Fi PHY layer algorithm optimization.
Xiang Wang received his Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics
from Nanjing University, in 2009. He joined Huawei in 2010,
and is responsible for research and standardization of xDSL and
in- door wireless communication technologies. He is currently
the vice chairman of ITU-T SG9 WP2, and the Rapporteur of
SG9 Q9.
Yunman Chen joined Huawei in 2017. Her research focus on
Wi-Fi roaming algorithm optimization and Wi-Fi MAC layer pro-
tocol design.
S huang G an joined Huawei in 2021. His research focus on
Wi-Fi MAC layer scheduling algorithm optimization and Wi-Fi
MAC layer protocol design.
Giuseppe Caire received his Ph.D. from Politecnico di Torino,
in 1994. He is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Professor
at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He received the
IEEE Communications Society and Information Theory Society
Joint Paper Award, in 2004 and in 2011, the Vodafone Inno-
vation Prize in 2015, the Leonard G. Abraham Prize for best
IEEE JSAC paper in 2019, the IEEE Communications Society
Edwin Howard Armstrong Achievement Award in 2020, and the
2021 Leibniz Prize of the German National Science Foundation.
Giuseppe Caire is a Fellow of IEEE since 2005. He has served in
the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society
from 2004 to 2007, and as officer from 2008 to 2013. He was
President of the IEEE Information Theory Society, in 2011.
49