CONVERGED 5G AND FIBER-WIRELESS ACCESS

NETWORKS ENHANCED WITH VISIBLE LIGHT

COMMUNICATIONS AND STEERABLE INFRARED BEAM

SEMINAR REPORT
​ ​submitted by

ANANYA.R.
​ LBT16EC010

to
the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree
of
Bachelor of Technology
Electronics and Communication Engineering

​Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

LBS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FOR WOMEN
POOJAPPURA, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM-695 012
November 2019
 DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
Lbs Institute Of Technology For Women,Poojappura Thiruvananthapuram-695 012

​CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Seminar report entitled ‟​Converged 5G and Fiber-Wireless
Access Networks Enhanced with Visible Light Communications and Steerable
Infrared Beam​” submitted by Ananya R to the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Bachelor of Technology
in Electronics and Communication is a bonafide record of the seminar work carried out by her
under our guidance and supervision. This report in any form has not been submitted to any other
University or Institute for any purpose.

Guide ​Head Of The Dept

Ms Ambika Omana Menon Prof.Suma Sekhar
Asst Professor Dept.of Electronics and Communication
Dept.of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Engineering

​ Seminar Coordinators

Prof Anusree M Prof. Soumya Babu H.

Asst. Professor, ECE Asst. Professor, ECE
 ​ CONTENTS
Contents Page no

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i
ABSTRACT ii
LIST OF TABLES iv
LIST OF FIGURES v
ABBREVIATIONS vi
NOTATION vii
Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 General Background 1
1.2 Objective 2
Chapter 2 . 3
2.1 THEORY 3
2.1.1 State Of Art 3
2.2 THE PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE 4
Chapter 3 DISCUSSION AND FUTURE SCOPE 9
3.1 WiFi-LiFi Offloading: 9
3.2 Delay and throughput analysis: 9
3.3 User centric and backhaul-aware load balancing: 10
3.4 Efficient handover algorithm 11
Chapter 4. CONCLUSION 12
REFERENCES 13
 ​ ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

With great regard,I, express my sincere gratitude to our Principal for permitting to utilise all the
facilities in our college for the completion of my

I am forever grateful and extend my heartfelt thanks to Prof Suma Sekhar, Head of Department
of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Seminar coordinators Prof Anusree, Prof.
Soumya Babu H. and Project guide Ms Amibika Omana Menon. They have provided us their
valuable time and effort for the completion of my seminar.

I thank all other faculty members of the Electronics and Communication Engineering
Department for their timely and assistance.

Above all I, praise and thank the Almighty God for support and guidance throughout my seminar
,eternal gratitude to my parents, family and friends for their words of encouragement and for
supporting me throughout my venture.

i
 ​ ABSTRACT

A new architecture is proposed to leverage visible light communication (VLC) and steerable
infrared (IR) beam to enhance the wireless data transmission rate of indoor users in the so-called
fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks. In the proposed architecture, VLC access points (APs),
referred to as light fidelity (LiFi) APs, besides WiFi APs are converged with fifth-generation
(5G) cellular networks to provide ultra-reliable and low latency communication (URLLC). In the
proposed architecture steerable IR beams are utilized as backhaul links of LiFi APs, as well as
multi-beam VLC link are implemented by using the on chip optical phased array. In this the
potentials and benefits of this architecture and outline future research directions to address the
challenges are also highlighted

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 ​LIST OF FIGURES
No . Title Page No

1 On Chip OPA 4
2 Beam Steering 4
3 Multi-beam Optical Phased Array 5
4 Indoor high rate hybrid radio and OAN 5
5 Passive Optical Network 6
6 Detailed Architecture 7
7 Beam steering capability based on phased tuning. 7
8 Radiation pattern 7
9 OPA 8
10 Maximum achievable throughput in FiWi-LTE-A 9
11 Average total delay 10
12 average achievable throughput 10

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 ​ABBREVIATIONS

​ APs Access Points

BS Base Station
5G 5th Generation Cellular Network
MIMO Multiple input multiple output
WiFi Wireless Fidelity
VLC Visible Light Communication
LiFi Light Fidelity
FiWi Fiber Wireless
URLLC Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication
IR Infrared Red
​Qos Quality of Service
RF Radio Frequency
MAC Multiple Access Control
FCGHs fast computer-generated holograms
OPA Optical Phased Array
OWMN Optical Wireless Mesh Network
ONT Optical Network Terminal
FFTH Fibre to Home
PON Passive Optical Network
NG-PON2 Next Generation PON Stage 2
OLT Optical Line Terminal
ONU Optical Network Unit
OCDMA Optical Code-Division Multiple Access
LAN Local Area Network
MPP Mesh Portal Point
MP Mesh Point
MAP Mesh Access Point
WAR WiFi availability ratio

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 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1 GENERAL BACKGROUND

The wireless capacity crunch (​limiting bandwidth spectrum -Improving Data capacity​) calls for
more efficient access techniques to be used in the fifth-generation (5G) of wireless networks, by
designing advance techniques (e.g., massive multi-input multi-output (mMIMO), and dense
small cell deployment), and harnessing new spectrum such as millimeter-waves (mmWave) .

CISCO’s network analytic reveals that about 80% of wireless traffic is generated (used) by
indoor users .​Wireless usage is shifting indoors. Network analytics show that the majority of
mobile data usage - close to 80 percent - is indoor and nomadic, rather than truly mobile. Macro
networks were built for voice on the go. Small cell networks are designed to address modern
mobile data traffic patterns​. Thus, improving data capacity of indoor access networks is of
paramount importance to tackle the wireless capacity crunch. Indoor optical wireless
communications have been receiving much attention as promising solutions to complement
conventional indoor wireless access technologies such as WiFi.

Visible light communication (VLC) technique, which utilizes light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for
both illumination and communications , is an energy efficient solution to provide high data rate
for indoor connectivity. VLC based access points (APs), referred to as light-fidelity (LiFi) APs
are known to be secure, since the light of LiFi APs cannot be tapped outside the room.
Furthermore, due to their low interference, they are getting diverse applications especially for
those are sensitive to the electromagnetic interference signals,such as in airplanes, hospitals, and
industrial areas (e.g., petro-chemical plants, mines, and oil rigs).

In LiFi APs, VLC is used for downlink transmission, while radio frequency (RF) or infrared
signals can be used for uplink transmission [6]. Integrating LiFi and WiFi APs is a promising
solution to leverage benefits of both technologies,where dual-connectivity, mobility-aware
resource allocation, uplink and downlink decoupling are some of issues which must be addressed
in a hybrid LiFi/WiFi access networks

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1.2 OBJECTIVE

Existing research mainly focused on integrating RF and VLC links in indoor environment
without considering the backhaul conditions of the whole access networks. Here Fiber-Wireless
(FiWi) access network enhanced with LiFi APs, referred to as FiWi-LiFi is introduced to
improve indoor achievable data rate.

In addition, its proposed to converge FiWi-LiFi architecture with the emerging 5G cellular
networks, e.g., 5G new radio (5G-NR). The proposed converged 5G and FiWi-LiFi architecture
can be used to support ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) and high rate
multi-media traffic in a unified access networks. ​URLLC (Ultra-reliable low latency
communication): Services for latency sensitive devices for applications like factory automation,
autonomous driving, and remote surgery. These applications require sub-millisecond latency
with error rates that are lower than 1 packet loss in 10⁵ packets

Moreover, the proposed architecture is capable of supporting multi-quality of service(mQoS)

Quality of service (QoS) refers to any technology that manages data traffic to reduce ​packet loss​,
latency and ​jitter on the network. QoS controls and manages network resources by setting
priorities for specific types of data on the network​.

In the latter part state of the art research for VLC and LiFi, and convergence of FiWi and 5G
wireless networks,the converged 5G and FiWi-LiFi architecture is presented.And last Section is
devoted to present the challenges and future research directions of the proposed architecture.

2
 CHAPTER 2

2.1 THEORY

2.1.1 State Of Art

Fiber-wireless networks have been extensively investigated during last decade , where in a
comprehensive review on FiWi architecture is presented and recent research directions in this
area are reviewed.

By combining the capacity of optical fiber networks with the ubiquity and mobility of wireless
networks, FiWi networks form a powerful platform for the support and creation of emerging as
well as future unforeseen applications and services, e.g., telepresence. FiWi networks hold great
promise to change the way we live and work by replacing commuting with teleworking. This not
only provides more time for professional and personal activities for corporate and our own
personal benefit, but also helps reduce fuel consumption and protect the environment, issues that
are becoming increasingly important in our lives.
Among these topics
(i) designing new multiple access control (MAC) mechanism,
(ii) latency reduction techniques in FiWi,
(iii) distributed antenna andFiWi-based multi-user MIMO schemes,
(iv) energy-efficient routing and resource allocation,
(v) mobile-edge computing are most important examples investigated over the past few years.

During the last few years, VLC has been considered as a complementary solution for WiFi to
enhance data rate of indoor wireless networks and also proposed to control VLC beam to
improve LiFi coverage for mobile users. Furthermore piezoelectric actuators has been used to
steer VLC beam, wherein it is shown that the coverage is improved. The application of
holograms and beam steering in VLC systems have been also proposed where fast
computer-generated holograms (FCGHs) with efficient adaptation have been generated for beam
steering, an adaptive infrared (IR) stored hologram technique has been utilized in order to steer
the beams in uplink of IR-VLC system In addition, via utilize steerable IR beam as either
backhaul links between LiFi APs or access links between users and APs. The proposed
FiWi-LiFi architecture can be converged with the emerging 5G wireless networks to support
URLLC and realize mQoS transmission

​3
2.2 THE PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE

In this paper, we consider a hybrid radio and optical wireless access network utilizing WiFi APs
and LiFi APs, to increases data rate of indoor access networks. We assume that LiFi APs
are equipped with steerable infrared beam based on the on chip optical phased array designed in
By exploiting a mobility-aware multiuser beamforming technique the coverage and
spectral efficiency of LiFi for mobile users are further improved

Fig 1:On Chip OPA Fig 2:Beam Steering

Furthermore, we propose to design a multi-beam optical phased array by extending the scheme
proposed and accordingly, a mobility-aware multi-user beamforming technique can be realized
In order to reduce deployment cost and labor, LiFi APs are equipped with optical wireless
backhaul links as shown

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 Fig 3: Multi-beam Optical Phased Array

In this architecture, LiFi APs constitute an optical wireless mesh network (OWMN) in which a
gateway connected to fiber backhaul link is considered to establish connection between optical
network terminal (ONT) and OWMN. In addition, a WiFi AP is deployed to provide indoor
radio coverage, where the WiFi AP is connected to ONT via an Ethernet link. Here,ONT
indicates the end user of a fiber access network realizing fiber-to-the-home (FFTH) based on the
so-called passive optical network (PON) architecture.

Fig 4:Indoor high rate hybrid radio and optical access network

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 Fig 5:Passive Optical Network
NG-PON2 (also known as TWDM-PON), ​Next-Generation Passive Optical Network 2 is a 2015
telecommunications network standard for a ​passive optical network (PON). The standard was
developed by ​ITU and details an architecture capable of total network throughput of 40 Gbit/s,
corresponding to up to 10 Gbit/s symmetric upstream/downstream speeds available at each
subscriber.

A passive optical network is a last mile, ​fibre-to-the-x telecommunications network that

broadcasts data through fibre optic cables. PONs are managed by passive optics such as
unpowered splitters and filters, offering high reliability and low cost compared to active
networks. The PON data stream is generally converted to a more traditional service such as
Ethernet and Wi-Fi at the subscriber's location.
NG-PON2 is compatible with existing PON fibre by replacing optical line terminal (OLT) at the
central office, and the optical network unit (ONU) near each end-user.Unique to this standard is
the use of both active filters and tunable lasers in the ONU.

Here the recently standard-ized PON technology, i.e. the next generation passive optical
network stage 2 (NG-PON2) is considered. This architecture can be also improved by using
Optical Code-Division Multiple Access (OCDMA) to support the growing multi-class traffic
The big picture of the proposed architecture is depicted In this architecture, NG-PON2 is used as
fiber backhaul of access networks serving 4G base stations (BS) and FTTH subscribers, where
ONT of each subscriber is connected to the proposed hybrid LiFi/WiFi indoor network. It is
worth mentioning that the integrated PON and wireless access networks architecture, referred to
as FiWi, is considered as a promising backhauling infrastructure for 5G wireless networks
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 Fig 6:Detailed Architecture

5G access networks integrated with FiWi architecture which is based on NG-PON2 and the
proposed indoor OWMN,where some of ONUs are equipped with a mesh portal point (MPP) to
interface with the WiFi APs, whereby mesh points (MPs)act as intermediate relay nodes and
mesh access points (MAPs) serve mobile users within their coverage area.

A “Mesh AP” is an AP gateway between the wireless mesh network and the enterprise wired
LAN​.​while a “Mesh Point” is an AP that establishes an all-wireless path to the Mesh AP. These
are also called Mesh Nodes.
Here ONUs are end users of PON architecture connected to optical line terminal (OLT) located
at central office.

Fig 7: Beam steering capability based on phased tuning. Fig 8:Radiation pattern

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There are two types of optical phased array (OPA) is utilised in the architecture which have
been designed in As a brief, 1-D array of Silicon grating couplers is designed for infrared range
on a 45×45 μm2-chip, which meets the ability of beam steering in a range of 25◦×30◦ with
maximum gain of 34.8dB Other design is for visible range by the means of 1-D arrayof Silicon
Nitride grating couplers able to steer beam in one dimension up to 40◦ and maximum gain of
25.4dB

Its proposed to use the first one for the backhaul links between LiFi APs, and the second one for
the link between users and LiFi APs.

Fig 9:OPA

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 ​ CHAPTER 3

DISCUSSION AND FUTURE SCOPE

3.1 WiFi-LiFi Offloading

One of the main advantages of the converged FiWi-LiFi and 5G wireless networks is to offload
traffic of 5G base stations (BSs) to WiFi or LiFi APs. Its showed that maximum throughput of
FiWi enhanced LTE advanced network (FiWi-LTE-A) can be improved by WiFi offloading

Fig 10:Maximum achievable throughput in FiWi-LTE-A

Its observed that there is an optimum value for WOR as long as WAR is higher than 0.7. These
results indicate that we need an adaptive and smart offloading algorithm to improve maximum
achievable throughput according to the network status. One of interesting research topic in the
proposed converged FiWi-LiFi and 5G access network is to design efficent offloading algorithms
to improve maximum achievable throughput by offloading traffic

Maximum achievable throughput in FiWi-LTE-A with respect to WiFi offloading ratio (WOR)
and and for different values of WiFi availability ratio (WAR)
load of macro- and small- base stations (MBS and SBS) of 5G network to LiFi and WiFi APs
based on the network status
​ 9
3.2 Delay and throughput analysis:

Analyzing end-to-end delay and throughput of the proposed converged 5G-FiWi-LiFi

architecture is of utmost importance to support URLLC applications.

To this aim,we must consider both initial access delay and transmission delay in WiFi, LiFi, and
5G connections as well as traffic dependent delay of fiber backhaul in the NG-PON2

​Fig 11: Average total delay Fig 12:average achievable throughput

3.3 User centric and backhaul-aware load balancing:

In order to support multi-QoS traffic we need to design user-centric resource allocation

algorithms in which users are associated to BSs and APs based on their QoS requirements in
terms of delay, maximum transmission data rate, and packet loss ratio. Furthermore, traffic load
of APs and BSs are considered to estimate their backhaul delay. Alao designed a backhaul-aware
and load-balancing (BA-LB) user association technique for FiWi-LET-A architecture, whereby
network performance in terms of achievable throughput and end-to-end delay is improved,

Designing a new BA-LB user association technique for the proposed converged 5G and
FiWi-LiFi architecture is an interesting research topic, in which the specific characteristics of
LiFi and the proposed OWMN must be modeled in the BA-LB algorithm. Moreover, delay
constraints of OWMN must be included in the association problem.

​ 10
3.4 Efficient handover algorithm:

As the proposed architecture, is a three-tier HetNet (containing three access technologies: 5G,
WiFi, and LiFi), it needs an efficient mechanism for vertical and horizontal handovers
Connecting a mobile user to an AP (or BS) with the same technology of its current serving AP
(orBS), is performed by horizontal handover mechanism, whereas movements of users between a
LiFi (or WiFi) AP and 5G BS (or WiFi and LiFi APs) is managed by vertical handover
algorithm. Designing smart and efficient vertical and horizontal handover mechanisms is an
essential issue in the proposed architecture,in which user’s movement trajectory should be
predicted and learned in order to realize seamless handover and enhance user’s quality of
experience.

​ ​11
 CONCLUSION

In this research its proposed to leverage VLC based APs,(LiFi APs) to enhance the achievable
data rates of indoor users in the FiWi access networks. The proposed scheme is a promising
solution to be converged with the emerging 5G wireless networks. In this architecture, referred to
as converged 5G and FiWi-LiFi, steerable IR beams are used as backhaul links between LiFi
APs, and multi-beam VLC links realized by silicon nitride optical phased array are utilized for
connections between users and APs. Finally, future research topics to address challenges of the
proposed architecture have been outlined

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