The Last Mile: Wireless Technologies for Broadband and Home Networks
Carlos de Morais Cordeiro, Hrishikesh Gossain, Roy Ashok · 2003
Until recently, limitations of the access networks have been the major obstacle to the “digital networked house”. The well-known “last mile problem” has hindered an effortless broadband access at home and, therefore, has impacted the home networking applications. However, recent advances in transmission and broadband access technologies are very promising and are capable of bringing information superhighway to the houses worldwide. More notably, broadband wireless access and home networking technologies are being warmly accepted by homeowners because of ease of installation, low cost, and high bandwidth. With this in mind, in this short course we investigate the concepts and technologies needed in between the consumers and the service provider, also known as last mile technologies. In other words, the focus of this chapter is to cover mainly WLL, WLAN, and WPAN systems. We begin with a discussion on the general concepts of broadband wireless communication, and then we delve into the enabling technologies of WLL such as MMDS, LMDS, satellite communications, the newly developed IEEE standard 802.16, HIPERACCESS, and so on. Next, we move on to WLAN technologies including IEEE 802.11a, 802.11b, and HIPERLAN. Finally, we depict the prominent WPAN systems such as Bluetooth, IrDA, HomeRF, and the IEEE standards 802.15.3 and 802.15.4.