Metropolitan area networks are currently receiving much commercial attention. With today’s abundance of fiber in the core, and with access networks creating larger demands, an important focus of research is to develop architectures that effectively handle ever-greater volumes of optical transmission in metropolitan areas. Core networks themselves will require advances, and as more capability is introduced into the access networks, the need will grow to continue to improve the bandwidth-times-distance product, as will demands to increase the performance of national networks.
Wireless networks provide an even more fertile area for exploration. Access to higher bandwidth, which has spurred growing use of the wired Internet and is now becoming available to wireless LAN users (via WiFi and WiMAX) and fully mobile users (via 3G technology), is basic to the creation of the so-called mobile Internet. There are many opportunities for further progress. At the physical level fundamental data rate limits for most environments are still very far from being achieved, and there are practical impediments, such as topography and the costs of certain components such as filters, to enhanced performance. Further development of multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) antenna technology, for example, offers opportunities to drive even greater capacity of wireless networks.
Developments in optical communications provide a good illustration of how multiple threads of research in electronics, photonics, signal processing, and coding theory have all contributed to the remarkable growth in optical transport capacity. These developments were driven first by the advantage of displacing the copper transport plant with optical fiber (early 1980s); the emergence of pervasive global connectedness (1980s and 1990s); widespread Internet use (starting in the mid-1990s); and broadband data and video access (starting circa 2000).
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