Approach

The future Internet will require an extremely high-bandwidth “core” and “access” network, along with the associated developments in transmission and switching that are required to achieve this. User expectations are high; the future Internet must be as simple to use as other utilities (gas, water, and electricity), high-capacity mass storage and other devices must plug in and work; “no new wires” should be required; and access to information should preferably be wireless. Services must be also portable and personalised, seamlessly following the consumer from place to place and device to device at any time, with no delay or interruption of service. In the absence of such an easy-to-install and easy-to-maintain Home Network, the consumer is required to have information technologies (IT) skills that are a major barrier to mass market broadband penetration.

 The future Home Network must also enrich the lives of consumers, for example by allowing visual communications with their friends or relatives, by enabling interactive experiences through entertainment, by assisting the consumers in maintaining their independence as they age, for example by offering remote healthcare and by allowing them to communicate with their family to reduce any sense of isolation they may have. In essence they must have the ability to control their virtual as well as their physical environment.

The OMEGA vision for a gigabit home area network

Given that FTTH access promises symmetric data rates of at least 100 Mbit/s, this implies a Home Network supporting Gbit/s data transmission and a latency time in the millisecond regime. It implies that the performance of the Home Network must be high enough to maintain several services simultaneously, each with very different requirements. Furthermore, it must be low-cost and easy to be manufactured in volume.
The OMEGA home network aims to deliver Gbit/s capacity and low latency within the home and to the access network, with either wireless transmission or transmission using existing wired home infrastructure, thus enabling access to and the development of new and innovative services.

Figure 1 illustrates the network concept. Data enters the home and is routed by the home gateway. The gateway in turn is connected to OMEGA hardware, which can deliver Gbit/s data transmission. Room-area communications is provided through ultra wide band (UWB) radio and broadcasting by use of visible-light communications (VLC).
To extend ultra broadband penetration, the gateway can also use lower frequency RF to connect to terminals, or use power-line communications (PLC) beyond state of the art 100 Mbps net to connect to OMEGA bridges within the house.  Bridges can alternatively or complementarily be networked by means of high speed radio backbone, leading to the first hybridization of wireline and wireless connectivities.