A problem reduction approach for the design of fault-tolerant wireless-optical access networks

Wireless-optical approaches, leveraging on the strengths of both wireless and optical technologies, are seen as promising approaches for future access networks. For wireless-optical access networks to provide geographically continuous wireless coverage, fault-tolerance must be integrated in the design of these networks. While at the optical back end different fiber failure impacts must be considered, at the wireless front end the disruption of wireless communication links must be taken into consideration. Here we address the problem of designing a fault-tolerant multi-radio wireless-optical access network, a problem that is hard to solve. Our goal here is to extract guidelines for the reduction of such complex problem, which is done through the analysis of wireless and optical failure impacts on network congestion. Two network scenarios, having different risk groups for gateways, are analysed.