Cooperative backhaul aided next-generation digital subscriber loops

思科最近发布了其流量预测研究报告，该研究表明，2018年世界将进入泽塔字节时代。仅英国就产生并消耗了全球大约10%的电信流量，使英国成为全球最依赖数据的国家之一。为了满足指数级增长的电话流量需求并维持目前的经济增长水平，需要一个基于创新和成本效益解决方案的高质量数字基础设施。当前的地缘经济和历史城市的建筑保护不赞成纤维的普遍渗透。因此，基于改进现有铜缆网络的低成本解决方案对于促进数字基础设施的转型以支持千兆比特/秒数据速率的下一步发展至关重要。自80年代出现以来，数字用户线路（DSL）一直是宽带接入的主导技术，在全球拥有3.641亿用户。最终，光纤解决方案将变得无处不在，但鉴于遍布英国/欧盟的庞大铜网络，光纤的普遍渗透可能会推迟几十年，铜可能仍然是遗产环境的最佳解决方案，以防止对历史街道结构造成不可挽回的破坏。由于大量的技术投资，DSL技术已经发生了巨大的发展，在新开发的G.fast解决方案的帮助下，将吞吐量从千兆位/秒提高到千兆比特/秒。然而，我们的工业合作伙伴英国电信的专家认为，当我们开发迄今尚未开发的高频频段时，借助最先进的铜技术实现的吞吐量可能只占其最终容量的不到30%。因此，超越G.fast的下一代超高吞吐量DSL系统的研究变得至关重要和及时，必须构思全新的信号处理技术。挑战是征服整个甚高频（VHF）频段，并整体设计所考虑的合并有线和无线系统。我们提出的研究从对整个500 MHz VHF频段上的DSL信道的基本理解开始，到设计解决关键挑战的激进信号处理技术。为充分开发铜的潜力，提出了整体系统优化方案。由于英国电信的大力支持，我们提出的研究具有很高的直接工程影响和长期的科学冒险。

Cisco has recently released its traffic forecast study, which suggests that the world will enter into the Zetta-byte era in 2018. The UK alone generates and consumes approximately 10% of the entire global tele-traffic, making the UK one of the most data-dependent countries on the globe. To meet the demand of exponentially growing tele-traffic and to sustain the current level of economical growth, a high-quality digital infrastructure based on innovative and cost efficient solutions is required. The current geo-economics and building-preservation of historic cities do not favour the pervasive penetration of fibre. Hence, a lower-cost solution based on the improved exploitation of the existing copper network is essential to facilitate transformation of the digital infrastructure to support the next evolutionary step to Giga-bit/s data rates. Since their emergence in the 80's, Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) have remained the dominant technology for broadband access with 364.1 million subscribers worldwide. Eventually fibre solutions will become ubiquitous, but given the vast copper network across the UK/EU, the pervasive penetration of fibre may be delayed for decades and copper may remain the best solution for heritage environments to prevent irreparable damage to historical street fabric. Owing to significant technology investments, DSL technology has evolved dramatically, increasing the throughput from Kilo-bit/s upto Giga-bit/s, with the aid of the newly developed G.fast solution. However, experts from our industrial partner BT believe that the throughput achieved with the aid of the state-of-the-art copper technology may only represent less than 30% of its ultimate capacity, when we exploit the hitherto unexploited high-frequency band. Hence, the research of next-generation ultra-high-throughput DSL systems beyond G.fast becomes of crucial importance and timely, where radically new signal processing techniques have to be conceived. The challenge is to conquer the entire Very High Frequency (VHF) band and to holistically design the amalgamated wire-line and wireless system considered. Our proposed research starts from the fundamental understanding of the DSL channel over the entire 500 MHz VHF band to the design of radical signal processing techniques for tackling the critical challenges. Holistic system optimization is proposed for exploiting the full potential of copper. Thanks to BT's huge support, our proposed research has a high immediate engineering impact and a long-term scientific adventure.