COMBO - COnvergence of fixed and Mobile BrOadband access/aggregation networks

CTTC participates in COMBO through several workpackages (WP) addressing different issues and project objectives: in WP2, CTTC will study the evolution of wireless and access aggregation segments, traffic offloading echnique, and the mobile backhaul in the context of fixed packet and optical network integration. Additionally, CTTC will contribute in traffic modelling for FMC networks implementing offloading scenarios by means of WLAN or femtocells. In WP3, CTTC will focus on the definition of a unified control plane (GMPLS/PCE architectures) for the integration of packet and optical technologies in meshed, dynamic and flexible FMC network along with studying within the aggregation segment, optimised network infrastructures leveraging the advantages of integrating both packet (e.g., MPLS and MPLS-TP) and optical (i.e., WSON) transport technologies. In WP4, CTTC investigates different management techniques, like traffic and path optimization, capacity planning, hand over management and self-organizing scenarios. Furthermore, topics related to RAN-transport interaction, covering for example load balancing in RAN evaluation of the traffic offloading, the RRM enablers and the meshed backhaul deployment will be also addressed. In WP5, CTTC will assess the energy saving benefits obtained by applying the new approach to set up RRM enablers in RAN. In WP6, CTTC work will concentrate on experimentally validating selected functions of specific parts of the FMC architecture. Specifically, the CTTC infrastructure covers the following FMC network segments: emulated RAN (based on LTE), optical aggregation network (based on integrated MPLS-TP / WSON) and limited EPC.