A SIMO Fiber Aided Wireless Network Architecture

The concept of a fiber aided wireless network architecture (FAWNA) is introduced in [Ray et al., Allerton Conference 2005], which allows high-speed mobile connectivity by leveraging the speed of optical networks. In this paper, we consider a single-input, multiple-output (SIMO) FAWNA, which consists of a SIMO wireless channel and an optical fiber channel, connected through wireless-optical interfaces. We propose a scheme where the received wireless signal at each interface is quantized and sent over the fiber. Though our architecture is similar to that of the classical CEO problem, our problem is different from it. We show that the capacity of our scheme approaches the capacity of the architecture, exponentially with fiber capacity. We also show that for a given fiber capacity, there is an optimal operating wireless bandwidth and an optimal number of wireless-optical interfaces. The wireless-optical interfaces of our scheme have low complexity and do not require knowledge of the transmitter code book. They are also extendable to FAWNAs with large number of transmitters and interfaces and, offer adaptability to variable rates, changing channel conditions and node positions.