A Ubiquitous wireless network architecture and its impact on optical networks

Optical networks will change greatly over the next 10 years. This is because, if the current growth rate is maintained, the Internet will have expanded 100–1000 times. Networked wireless appliances, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and wireless sensors, are expected to greatly outnumber PCs. Such exponential changes in network capacity and terminals may lead to the emergence of post-IP networks. This paper introduces a candidate for a post-IP network called the “appliance defined ubiquitous network (ADUN)”, which supports niche ubiquitous network applications for affordable implementation. The ADUN will demand optical networks that can transport 10–100 Gbps streams, each of which requires almost the full transmission capacity of one wavelength or a wavelength group. This paper discusses directions for the functional enhancement of optical network architecture, dynamically using wavelengths for grid computing, so as to support the ADUN.