ORGANIZERS:
Volker Jungnickel (Fraunhofer HHI)
Maxim Kuschnerov (Huawei)

ABSTRACT:
The workshop addresses the increasingly important in-building network segment, where more than 80% of our data traffic is consumed and people get used to connecting wirelessly, at least on the last hop. The growth of mobile data rates has been realized mostly by network densification. While 4G and its evolution to 5G requires optical fiber to every base station, 6G needs fibers to and inside every building. Fiber-to-the-room (FttR) will connect numerous wireless access points inside buildings, what has the potential to increase area capacity and reduce energy per bit by orders of magnitude compared to “illuminating” the building from outdoor base stations, i.e. common practice today. 5G campus networks are a high-end solution for big industry, but acceptance in small and medium enterprises is low, due to the cost of equipment, deployment and maintenance. As a low-end alternative, 6G may be complemented by optical access and in-building networks, such as 2.5/10/50G-PON, besides Ethernet, PLC and Coax, to connect every room and install new wireless technologies, e.g., Wi-Fi 8 together with mm-wave and LiFi. A mix of low-cost optical and wireless technologies has the potential to provide high reliability, low latency and low energy per bit inside buildings, and thus meet 6G requirements.
Panelists will discuss with the audience, e.g. how optical technologies support higher QoS inside buildings, how they can be scaled to higher volumes to enable lower cost, how to deploy fiber inside buildings, how to combine FttR with Wi-Fi, mm-wave and LiFi, how to integrate in-building networks into 6G, what the main application areas are and what optical communication can do to improve the reliability and reduce latency of in-building networks in general.

AGENDA:
Session 1
Introduction
• Volker Jungnickel (Fraunhofer HHI)
• Maxim Kuschnerov (Huawei)
Fixed network technologies
• Rene Bonk (Nokia), ”Optical Access Networks – Passive Optical Networks”
• Joerg Deutschmann (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg), “Internet via LEO Satellites – Revolutionary, Complementary, or Unreasonably?”
• Martin Kuipers (Adtran), “Access and Home Networks: A Symbiotic Evolution“
• Xu Fan (Huawei), “Intelligent FTTR: Technological Roadmap towards 2030 for 10G & Beyond”
Wireless technologies.
• Stephen McCann ( ), “Wi-Fi—An subjective overview of yesterday, today, and tomorrow”
• Rainer Strobel (Maxlinear), “In-Building Networks – Distributing the Multi-Gigabit Service inside the Home”

Session 2
Wireless technologies (cont’d)
• Wilhelm Keusgen (TU Berlin), “mm-Wave for Access and In-building Networks”
• Christoph Kottke (Fraunhofer HHI), “Optical Wireless Communication (LiFi)”
Applications
• Philippe Chanclou (Orange), “Move forward (fiber)broadband coverage in home LAN”
• Ernst-Joachim Steffens (EJS Industrie 4.0), “Industrial and Medical Applications”
Panel (all speakers)