Towards Medium Transparent MAC Protocols for Cloud-RAN mm-Wave Communications over Next-Generation Optical Wireless Networks

The 60 GHz millimeter-wave band remains the only unlicensed, high-capacity spectral zone which is however limited to Personal Area Networks due to its picocellular nature. Facilitating mm-wave communication onto Radio-over-Fiber infrastructures alleviates the picocellular range handicap while it offers multi-Gbps wireless connectivity. In light of the above we report on the performance of a combined PON-plus-802.11ad network, showing for the first time the interplay capabilities of both standards towards forming extended reach 60 GHz WLANs. We obtained simulation-based throughput and delay measurements both for pure 802.11ad and hybrid PON-plus-802.11ad networks, addressing the dependence of the consolidated architecture on the load, the wireless packet payload and the percentage of intra-Access Point to Internet-destined traffic. Finally, we present a network platform that hosts functional and physical consolidation of the Medium-Transparent MAC (MT-MAC) 60 GHz WLANs with Fiber-Wireless architectures supporting Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RAN) in order to create robust, versatile and ultra-fast next generation networks.