Towards Green Optical/Wireless In-Building Networks: Radio-Over-Fiber

Energy efficiency has become a major paradigm in the design and operation of future telecommunication networks. Recent studies show that the aggregate power consumption of in-building IT networks (residential and office) is massive and comparable with that of data centers due to the large number of buildings. In this paper, we analyze the energy efficiency of next-generation in-building IT networks to deliver high-speed mobile access to end users via integrated optical/wireless networks using Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) technology. Based on a validated energy efficiency model, our results show that although individual point-to-point RoF links are not as energy efficient as legacy Baseband-over-Fiber links, RoF networks may actually be more energy-efficient when designed keenly with small cells sizes and when the static energy consumption of the remote units is above a particular threshold. Under the assumptions used in this paper, we show that the DRoF-based architectures can be designed to more energy efficient for cell sizes <17 m.