Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872

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Computer Networks
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comnet

A Ubiquitous wireless network architecture and its impact

on optical networks
Haruhisa Ichikawa a,*, Masashi Shimizu b, Kazunori Akabane b, Osamu Ishida b,
Mitsuo Teramoto b
a
The University of Electro-Communications: JST CREST, 1-5-1, Choufugaoka, Choufu-shi, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan
b
NTT Network Innovation Laboratories, 1-1 Hikari-no-oka, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 239-0847, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Optical networks will change greatly over the next 10 years. This is because, if the current
Received 10 July 2007 growth rate is maintained, the Internet will have expanded 100–1000 times. Networked
Accepted 8 December 2007 wireless appliances, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and wireless sensors,
Available online 18 March 2008
are expected to greatly outnumber PCs. Such exponential changes in network capacity and
terminals may lead to the emergence of post-IP networks. This paper introduces a candi-
date for a post-IP network called the ‘‘appliance defined ubiquitous network (ADUN)”,
Keywords:
which supports niche ubiquitous network applications for affordable implementation.
Optical network
Ubiquitous wireless network
The ADUN will demand optical networks that can transport 10–100 Gbps streams, each
Internet of which requires almost the full transmission capacity of one wavelength or a wavelength
Terabit LAN group. This paper discusses directions for the functional enhancement of optical network
Grid architecture, dynamically using wavelengths for grid computing, so as to support the
RFID ADUN.
DROF Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
SDR
Disruptive innovation

1. Introduction home (FTTH) service subscribers will soon exceed 10 mil-

The Internet has continued to grow rapidly. A task force
organized by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Communications estimated that Japanese Internet traffic
had more than doubled in a year, by measuring the traffic
at the Internet Exchange Point in Tokyo in April 2004 [1].
Their most recent report, in February 2007, shows that
the Japanese Internet is still growing at a rate of 150%
per year. At this rate, the Japanese Internet will be 100–
1000 times larger after 10 years. This is true for both the
core and access networks. The number of fibers to the
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 46 240 5000; fax: +81 46 2222.
E-mail addresses: ichikawa.haruhisa@lab.ntt.co.jp (H. Ichikawa),
shimizu.masashi@lab.ntt.co.jp (M. Shimizu), akabane.kazunori@lab.ntt.
co.jp (K. Akabane), ishida.osamu@lab.ntt.co.jp (O. Ishida), teramoto.
mitsuo@ lab.ntt.co.jp (M. Teramoto).
lion. This Internet growth rate will eventually be matched
throughout the world. Such exponential growth will inev-
itably lead to a huge qualitative change in the network.
Optical networks should be able to support both exponen-
tial capacity growth and qualitative changes, since they
form one of the most basic infrastructures of information
and communication technology.
Network architectures have previously been deter-
mined by the major terminals for the networks. Telephony
networks are designed to provide stable voice communica-
tion channels for 3.4 kbps voice streams between tele-
phones by ensuring that the quality of the service meets
certain standards. It should be noted that packets are rou-
ted between host computers on the Internet, while tele-
phony networks are switched networks. This difference
between the characteristics of the two types of network
traffic leads to a difference between the two network

1389-1286/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2007.12.013
 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872
architectures. Therefore, the essential architectural change
of the Internet is considered to depend on whether com-
puters remain as the major terminals in the future.
Passive or active radio frequency identification (RFID)
tags and wireless sensors are expected to be employed for
networking real objects of the real world. If this approach
is implemented, such devices will become the major termi-
nals, since the number of real objects is a hundred or a thou-
sand times greater than the number of PCs. Most of the
devices are much weaker than PCs in terms of their func-
tions. They will be power-sensitive and will not always
operate at high speed. They provide functions for limited
purposes. Once they constitute the majority of terminals,
the networks, hereafter ‘‘ubiquitous wireless networks”,
will undergo essential changes in terms of architectures.
This paper introduces a ubiquitous wireless network
architecture leading to the post-IP network, and discusses
its impacts on the optical network architecture supporting
both the IP and the post-IP networks with much greater
bandwidths than those presently in use. It is often useful
for future network design to study extremely high-end
applications. As one of such network designs, Section 2
introduces an optical local area network that can transmit
Terabit-class bulk data with low latency in a dynamic man-
ner for grid applications with super-computers [2]. Section
3 reviews the history of disruptive network innovations.
The review points out that network architectures are
determined by terminals or appliances to be networked,
and that optical networks should be designed accounting
for the possible shift of appliances to be networked in
the future. In Sections 4 and 5, active RFID appliances are
introduced as the entry and the ultimate appliances for
the ubiquitous wireless networks, and the grand chal-
lenges for ubiquitous wireless network deployment are
discussed and summarized. In Section 6, we introduce an
approach to ubiquitous wireless network deployment
and show that this approach may lead to a post-IP net-
work. The approach introduces a new architecture, called
the appliance defined ubiquitous network (ADUN) [3],
where wireless radio spaces are virtually extended over
broadband networks to enable affordable implementation
of ubiquitous network applications. Broadband streams of
10–100 Gbps are transmitted over the ADUN. In order to
employ advanced digital radio signal-processing technolo-
gies as far as possible, virtually extended wireless spaces
should maintain the relationship between their corre-
sponding real spaces. This paper discusses the new
requirements that this will impose on optical networks.
These requirements are different from those imposed by
grid applications. They indicate the progress direction of
the optical network as the basic infrastructure for both
the Internet and post-IP networks.
2. Optical network evolution
When developing innovative technologies for network
capacity expansion, it is often useful to study the require-
ments of high-end applications. For example, grid comput-
ing for super-computers has the potential to generate
extremely large data transmissions. Recent grid applica-
1865
tions typically have terabit to petabit data size requirements
[4], and each data set should be transmitted within several
seconds or several tens of seconds. This section introduces
the approach proposed in [2] that is designed to satisfy these
requirements by using wavelength groups dynamically. We
call optical networks that employ groups of wavelengths
dynamically from end to end ‘‘lambda access networks.”
An optical local area network architecture has been pro-
posed [2], where terabit-class bulk data can be transmitted
with low latency in a dynamic manner. Fig. 1 shows an
example network configuration. The network consists of
parallel optical interfaces, each of which is attached to
three components: a super-computer or a visualization
server; wavelength-banks, each of which provides required
wavelengths to each interface; and an optical switch,
which connects an optical interface via optical fibers in
the star configuration. It should be noted that the concept
must include multiple switching nodes and not be re-
stricted to the star topology. The main characteristics of
the network architecture, known as optical virtual concat-
enation, are (1) the assignment of an arbitrary number of
wavelengths to a bulk-data set for transmission according
to the latency requirement, and (2) the transmission of a
bulk-data set by dividing it into an arbitrary number of
blocks and passing the blocks across parallel WDM signals
as virtually contiguous data. When a bulk data set arrives
at an optical interface, the transmitter requests the estab-
lishment of optical channels on multiple wavelengths
through the control plane, where the number of wave-
lengths is derived from the latency requirement. The trans-
mitter divides the bulk-data set into parallel streams, and
stores them in electronic buffer-memories until the reser-
vation is complete. If the optical switch finds a group of
available wavelengths, it sends a positive command and
information about the wavelengths, either to the next opti-
cal switch (hop) or to the receiver, through the control
plane. If the receiver accepts the positive command and
information, it sends back an acknowledgement signal
with wavelength group information. The optical switch re-
ceives the acknowledgement, transfers this to the trans-
mitter, and then sets up the switch configuration.
The key physical technologies in the above network have
been verified in a field demonstration [5]. A successful opti-
cal virtual concatenation of 32 km was achieved, where the
wavelength group switching was implemented by an 8  8
planar lightwave circuit (PLC) optical switch matrix, and the
wavelength group conversion was implemented by a polar-
ization independent waveband converter based on the qua-
si-phase – matched LiNBO3 (QPM-LN) waveguide.
3. Possible disruptive innovation of ubiquitous wireless
networks
3.1. Network architecture dependability on terminals or
appliances
We should pay attention to the possibility that the
extraordinary expansion of network capacity may lead to
a shift in network architectures or, more generally speak-
ing, the ICT platforms. Network architectures have histori-
1866 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872
Wavelength-bank
Storage Server
Optical frequencies
Delay non-critical
-> needs 2 waves
Visualizing
Server Fast optical switch
Parallel optical I/F
with Virtual Concatenation
Fig. 1. Network configuration of Terabit LAN.
cally been determined by terminals or appliances. In the
era of plain old telephone services, the terminals were tele-
phone terminals, and the role of the network was to pro-
vide communication channels for voice communications,
where a stable quality of 3.4 KHz bandwidth stream trans-
mission between the caller and the receiver was demanded
for each voice communication. As a result, the circuit
switching architecture was adopted for telephony net-
works. On the other hand, the end systems for the Internet
are computers. Computers transmit bulk-data, so the pack-
et switching architecture was adopted.
We can find the impact of the terminal change from
telephones to computers in the following architectural
principles of the Internet, summarized from the Internet
Architecture Board document [6]. The Internet technolo-
gies have been designed and developed by paying much
attention to these principles.
1. The goal is connectivity.
2. The tool is the Internet Protocol.
3. The intelligence is end-to-end rather than hidden in the
network.
The first principle demands that all the computers
should be able to communicate with each other. All the
IP addresses are, in principle, known to all the computers
connected to the Internet. Special arrangements are re-
quired if the communications should be restricted only be-
tween limited groups of computers. Different from the
telephony network, other features of communications,
such as quality, are given second priority.
In the second principle, the Internet Protocol is a packet
routing protocol, which is suitable for bulky data transfer
between computers.
The third principle comes from the fact that computers
are powerful and flexible enough to implement services at
the ends. This principle was very reasonable when the ter-
minals shifted from dumb telephone terminals to
computers.
3.2. Long term preparations for the disruptive innovation on
the internet
In addition to the impacts of the major terminal changes
in the network architectures, as described in the previous
Super computer
Delay critical da
x -> needs 6 waves
subsection, we can learn much about the terminal change
impacts from the deployment history of the Internet.
Disruptive innovations were elegantly studied by Prof.
Clayton Christensen of Harvard University [7]. One of the
disruptive innovations is the creation of the PC industry.
The PC industry grew by using research and development
results accomplished for mainframe and mini computers.
For example, broad ranges of R&D were conducted for mas-
sive fast disc systems, efficient in terms of cost per byte
from materials to systems. Exponential improvement of
disc technologies brought out disruptive innovation in
the computer industries. In the early 1980s, the emerging
market of desktop personal computers was strengthened
using the 5.25-inch disc drives which failed to address
the needs of the mini computer market at that time. The
5.25-inch drive was small and lightweight. Priced at
around $2000, it could be incorporated into desktop ma-
chines economically. The personal computers in those days
were targeted at the niche market of computer nerds, but,
as is well known, eventually eroded the mainframe and
mini computer businesses.
Disruptive innovation also occurred in the telecommu-
nication industries. Very long term preparatory efforts
were made before the disruptive innovation as described
in Fig. 2. The first packets were successfully transmitted
over ARPA-NET in 1969. From that point, it took more than
20 years for the Internet to become commercially sustain-
able. TCP/IP protocol standards were developed and ap-
plied to the net in 1983. Important companies and
organizations such as Cisco Systems, SUN Microsystems
and the Internet technology standardization organization,
IETF, were established in these 20 years. The business
model for the Internet Service Providers (ISP) was also in-
vented as seen in the creation of MCI ISP service. Vast
amounts of government funds, from both DARPA and the
NSF, were used for government-industry-academic collab-
oration, to provide the researchers and engineers of the
Internet with test beds where the Internet technologies
could be developed, used for services, such as e-mail, and
improved.
Broadband network technologies, such as synchronous
digital hierarchy (SDH) and wavelength division multiplex-
ing (WDM), contributed to the rapid growth of the Inter-
net, which was not intended by the investors in these
technologies. Telecom industries made huge and long term
 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872 1867

- Government-industry-academic collaboration more than 20 years

- R&D results for telephony service innovation drove disruptive
innovation of Internet

Product Performance
DARPA“ NSF“
Universal Super n
VoIP/
Networking” Computing” atio Instant Messagin g
I n nov
g
Performance Demanded By t a inin (2000)
s
Su Napster(1999)
High-end Market WDM
e ion
s r u ptiv I
vat
nno Google(1998)
n
Di vatio stainin g
SDH o Su
PC In n
Performance Demanded By
WS Low-end Market
Mini-Computer, E-mail Web(1991), Archie(1990)
UUNET Commercial Service(1987)
TCP/IP, NSF Net/(Merit,MCI,IBM)(1983)
AT&T Divestiture1984) vBNS(95) MCI(00)
ARPA-net(1969) SUN Microsystems(1982) IIJ(1993) Time
Cisco Systems(1984)

Fig. 2. The Internet evolution through disruptive innovation.

investments in such technologies for so called broadband wireless bands of 2.4 GHz, 950 MHz, and 13.56 MHz, for
multimedia communications as advanced telecommunica- whether they could be used for container tracking. The
tions services. The developed technologies brought out dis- photo in Fig. 3 shows the scene of the test, where three
ruptive innovation, and the Internet is ultimately going to PCs display the tracked data using 426 MHz and 303 MHz
substitute for telephone networks. wireless bands for active RFID tags, and 953 MHz for pas-
The bandwidth of the Internet has kept growing rapidly sive RFID tags. The systems using the active RFID tags of
and has become powerful enough to even carry video 426 MHz and 303 MHz successfully tracked the container
streams. Such bandwidth is considered excessive, in some transfer, but passive RFID tags were proven to be inapplica-
sense, for e-mail and simple web access. Thus, we might be ble for container tracking. Based on this test result, the
at the beginning of another disruptive innovation. In the wireless band of 433 MHz was agreed to be used interna-
following, we will build a scenario of such disruptive tionally for container tracking with active RFID. A well-
innovation from the Internet towards ubiquitous wireless engineered 433 MHz version of the above described sys-
networks. tem was successfully tested by tracking containers from
the Hong Kong port to the Kobe port.
4. Appliances for ubiquitous wireless networks The black object attached to a PC in the photo of Fig. 4 is
an active RFID tag for another application system for inven-
As discussed in the previous section, terminals or appli- tory management. As a special type of inventory manage-
ances are considered to determine the network architec- ment, the system was built to monitor the position of PCs
tures. In this section, we introduce the active RFID within a building for information security protection.
appliances for commercial solutions and the experimental
wireless appliances for intelligent communications services
[8,9] as the entry and ultimate appliances of the future,
respectively. The applications of the former and latter wire-
less appliances are quite different, but both are equipped
with batteries and similar sensors. We think active RFID will
evolve into major appliances for future ubiquitous wireless
networks.
There have been many specific but economically useful
active RFID systems developed. An active RFID system for
international container tracking was developed, where an
active RFID reader was included in each container. The
reader reads the active RFID tags at each place the con-
tainer passes through, to collect the information on the
container traveled route. In addition to this, the reader
monitors the temperature and vibrations of the container
using its internal sensors. The collected data is kept in
the storage of the reader and retrieved afterwards. This
system was tested at the port of Kobe, Japan in January
2006. Passive RFID tags were also tested, using various Fig. 3. Experiment of international container tracking system.
1868 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872
Fig. 4. PC tracking system for information security protection.
Technologies for capturing and searching real world
events are studied for intelligent communications in [8,9].
Fig. 5 illustrates the experimental system which comprises
two modules: a query module and a search engine. Sensors
attached to physical objects sense the physical information,
such as motion of objects, and transmit the data to the sen-
sor database. The query module accepts a query in the form
of an English word set and translates it into a representa-
tion that the search engine can interpret. The search engine
then searches the sensor database by calling the sensor
grounder, which finds a data segment that satisfies the
query condition. Also, the query module answers by, for
example, displaying a video image recorded by video cam-
eras or by sending a reply via e-mail. The sensor appliance
is equipped with (a) micro-sensors, such as an accelerome-
ter, a thermometer, a hydrometer, an illuminator, or a hu-
man detector, and (b) wireless networking and computing
engine for communicating with the servers. The experi-
mental system demonstrates that it is possible to answer
questions such as ‘‘Who dropped this vase?” by finding
the identifier of the questioned vase, receiving the data
from the sensor attached to the vase, translating the sensed
data into the movement of the vase, and retrieving the vi-
deo image at the time when the sensor detected the vase
dropped.
Fig. 5. Real world information capturing system.
The active RFID solutions are useful, but presently form
only niche markets. They do not seem to provide markets
large enough to build ubiquitous wireless networks for
their own purposes, while their aggregate will input vast
amount of information to the networks in the future. The
RFID appliance designs are not very independent from
their applications. For instance, the data size and duty
cycle of RFID radio protocols and the radio transmission
power are carefully designed so that their functions should
be suitable for their applications. The batteries of RFID
appliances should operate just as long as needed for
the applications. Power consumption is one of the most
critical issues for RFID radio interface design, whether
the RFIDs are active or passive. For example, the famous
EPC five cents passive RFID tags can be read by readers
10 m away from the tags, while only a small amount of
data from the tags, that is their identification numbers,
can be transmitted. On the other hand, passive RFID tags
carrying electronic money must send very secure radio
protocols, so that the RFID radio signals cannot be trans-
mitted over many meters. It is difficult to have a single
standard for a wireless protocol, even for passive RFIDs. Ac-
tive RFIDs have more options in their radio interface de-
sign. There can be many ways to use the limited battery
power to meet the required functions, the reachable range
of the radio signals, data size, duty cycle, and so on. Conse-
quently, it is difficult to standardize the protocols of active
RFIDs.
5. Grand challenges of ubiquitous wireless network
deployment
Many efforts have been made to clarify the grand chal-
lenges presented by ubiquitous or sensor networks. Most
of these efforts are concerned with networks with huge
numbers of wireless appliances. However, the history of
the Internet indicates that it is important to focus on the
deployment process from the smallest to the largest scale
and to design the architectural principles that control the
deployment process. If the principles have to be com-
pletely different from the ones for the Internet, the net-
work will be a post-IP network. In this section, we
discuss the grand challenges facing ubiquitous wireless
network deployment.
5.1. Niche application
As discussed in the previous section, it appears difficult
to standardize the interface between wireless appliances
and networks. Fig. 6 shows the frequency allocations avail-
able for RFID with the upper-limits of their radio transmis-
sion power and bandwidth. The communication range of
wireless systems depends greatly on their frequency prop-
agation conditions and radiation power. Therefore, the
radio band will be selected according to the requirements
of the target applications. As a result, there will be many
kinds of readers receiving signals from wireless appliances.
The cost of system or infrastructure construction and
operation will be too great to provide niche markets
with ubiquitous network access if many kinds of read-
 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872 1869

UHF
HF
LF Passive
Passive
Passive Short
IC Card
Immobilizer Range Devices
Common
915MHz USA
< 135KHz Use
869MHz Microwave Worldwide
WiFi
EU Regional
13.56MHz 2.45GHz
433MHz
5.2GHz Almost
EU
worldwide
US 5.8GHz
Japan

315MHz
953MHz
US
Japan
JAPAN

0.1MHz 1MHz 10MHz 100MHz 1GHz 10GHz

Active Smart Key

Fig. 6. Frequency allocation available with RFID.

ers are installed, as is the case today. We need technologies 5.3. Technological innovation
that enable resources to be shared between applications.
Current technologies used for ubiquitous wireless net-
5.2. Security/privacy issues works are rather primitive. Innovative wireless technolo-
gies are expected to appear in the future for signal
Security and privacy issues should be carefully taken detection performance improvement, signal source loca-
into consideration with new technology deployment. Peo- tion, and so on. Wireless appliances will also be much im-
ple are particularly concerned with the power that tech- proved. Ubiquitous wireless networks should be able to
nology has for information distribution, in spite of the accommodate themselves to such technological innova-
fruitful contributions expected. tions. In addition, the ubiquitous wireless networks will
In the large scale deployment trials of passive RFID sup- be constructed over the Internet initially, so that efficient
ported by MIT Auto-ID center, which was the RFID stan- migration from the Internet should be taken into account.
dardization organization, some part of the trials were
prevented by a consumer group, Consumers Against Super-
6. Appliance defined ubiquitous network
market Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN). They
made an objection against the attachment of RFIDs outside
6.1. Tools for making the infrastructure soft
shops to consumer products, such as safety razors, so as to
track the product lifecycles related to consumer private
Digitized radio on fiber (DROF) [10,11] is a technology
lives. It is believed that supply chain management perfor-
for transferring wireless space radio information to a re-
mance can be improved by substituting passive RFID for
mote receiver site, by digitizing the information and then
bar codes. RFID tags enable one to identify individual prod-
transferring it over broadband networks. DROF enables
ucts by assigning different identification numbers to the
us to locate receivers at the optimum sites with respect
individual products of the same category, while the same
to system construction and operating cost. It will be possi-
bar code number is assigned to all the products of a cate-
ble for operators to take care of many different users’
gory. By tracking each individual product, the whole lifecy-
receivers, as well as share receivers between users.
cle of the individual product can be managed, from its
Software defined radio (SDR) [12,13] is a technology
production to destruction. This was opposed by CASPIAN
with which to implement radio systems, using software in-
because the tracking could reveal the precise records of
stead of hardware circuits. Multi protocol readers employ-
consumers’ behavior, that is, it could compromise con-
ing SDR would be feasible if the required signal speed is
sumer privacy. This is very serious for passive RFID tag
not very fast. Fig. 7 illustrates a straightforward implemen-
deployment because the additional performance improve-
tation that makes the fixed broadband network universal
ment of the consumer product supply chain management
for wireless appliance systems by using DROF and SDR
becomes difficult by substituting RFIDs for bar codes.
technologies. Wireless spaces are essentially extended to
Active RFID appliances can collect much richer informa-
the receiver sites.
tion than passive RFID, so consumer privacy protection
should be considered mandatory in active RFID application
systems. Also, some typically expected applications relate 6.2. Architectural principles
to the security of our lives. It would not be easy for individ-
ual niche ubiquitous wireless network application systems To cope with the above challenges, we propose an
to satisfy the requirements of security and privacy with an architecture for ubiquitous networks called appliance de-
acceptable cost for users. fined ubiquitous networks (ADUN) with the following
1870 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872

Extended Wireless Space Application

Protocol
Reader
IF or AD Broadband
Baseband C Network Decoder

Wireless
Wireless Space
Appliances Info. Storage

Fig. 7. Wireless space extension with DROF and SDR.

architectural principles, which are quite different from
those of the Internet.
1. Networks with ADUN architecture speak the protocols
spoken by the appliances. Regarding current net-
works, it should be noted that terminals/appliances
have been designed to speak the protocols expected
by the networks.
2. Continuous radio information included in wireless
spaces, rather than individual wireless appliance sig-
nals, is transported over the network. This means that
radio information streams are transported over the net-
works, while packets are transported over the Internet.
3. Wireless appliances and radio signals received by
antennas have owners. Signals from the spaces and
the appliances are received and processed under the
control of the owners. In other words, the ADUN net-
work comprises private networks. In contrast, any
Internet host can send/receive packets to/from any
other host. The hosts’ applications are responsible for
confirming that the packets they send to the hosts are
the intended ones. Internet hosts cannot prevent the
arrival of packets from malicious hosts.
4. Signals from the wireless spaces and appliances of dif-
ferent owners are internetworked by administrators
trusted by all the owners.
6.3. Architecture
An owner’s view of an example ADUN network is shown
in Fig. 8. There are two kinds of wireless appliances (WAP)

Fig. 8. Owner’s view of ADUN.

 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872
that are owned by individuals or used for public purposes.
WAPs are located in private or public spaces. Radio signals
in a certain frequency range in a private space are digitized
and transported over a private wireless space network
(WSN) to an information-sharing platform (ISP). The ISP
is operated by an administrator trusted by all the ADUN
users. The digitized radio streams from the owner’s private
space are stored in a database, read by the owner’s deco-
der, and used by the owner’s applications. To share his/
her own and public WSN with others, the owner allows
the ISP to use his/her WAP signal decoder. If a visitor is al-
lowed by the owner to use the owner’s private WSN, the
ISP extracts the visitor’s WAP data by decoding the owner’s
radio stream and stores them in the visitor’s database. On
the other hand, if the owner is allowed to use someone’s
WSN, the ISP extracts the owner’s WAP data and stores
them in the owner’s WAP database in the same manner.
The ISP also extracts the public WAP data and stores them
in the public WAP database; every user is allowed to use
the public WSN. A wireless space analyzer finds new infor-
mation by decoding and searching the stored data. For
example, the context of a certain owner’s WAP will be in-
ferred by decoding and searching other owners’ space data.
6.4. Traffic generated by ADUN
It is difficult to transfer all the radio information in a
wireless space using DROF without any restrictions on,
for example, the wireless frequencies, radio systems, or an-
tenna sizes. As shown in Fig. 6, the wireless bands available
for ubiquitous network appliances are restricted to those
listed below. This restriction will not change greatly be-
cause new systems will be legally expected to use wireless
bands without interfering with existing systems.
1. 312–440 MHz,
2. 869–960 MHz,
3. 2.4–2.4835 GHz.
Simple radio systems have been applied to the 312–
440 MHz band, where a bandwidth of less than 1 MHz is
assigned to each channel. On the other hand, a 26 MHz
bandwidth is allowed for use with spread spectrum sys-
tems for the 915 MHz industry, science, medical (ISM)
band in the USA. In the 2.4 GHz band, a bandwidth of
83.5 MHz is available for a typical radio system, IEEE
802.11g [14], which uses a 64 QAM modulation/demodula-
tion system.
The relationship between signal-to-noise ratio and bit
error rate depends on the modulation-/-demodulation sys-
tems. When we take this into account, radio information
over 83.5 MHz in the 2.4 GHz band is transported at about
8 Gbps over DROF. It should be noted that the latency con-
dition assumed by IEEE 802. 11g, ‘‘short inter frame space”
from the ‘‘data packet send” to ‘‘ACK receive,” remains a
problem when extending the wireless space by DROF. In
the 312–440 MHz band, it is desirable for ADUN to trans-
port the 128 MHz band by down converting the 312–
440 MHz band; thus making the ADUN independent of
radio systems. The 128 MHz band is estimated to generate
a 5.1 Gbps stream over DROF.
1871
6.5. Impacts on optical network architectures
The wireless space can provide rich information
through the use of both real time and non-real time pro-
cessing, as seen in the radio telescope field. The virtually
extended wireless spaces in ADUN should keep the rich
information included in real wireless spaces as far as pos-
sible. This will need greater bandwidth than the above esti-
mation for ADUN with respect to the transfer, and will also
impose additional requirements. For example, antenna
diversity is a technology for improving the performance
of receivers using radio information over multiple radio
paths. In order to use this technology, virtually extended
radio paths should attempt to maintain the relationship
between the corresponding real paths. For example, virtual
radio paths with low latency will be required, but trans-
mission delay stability and multi path synchronization will
also be demanded. These requirements are different from
those imposed by grid applications, but the two require-
ments do not seem to be contradictory for future optical
networks. The ADUN will be well supported by the lambda
access architecture introduced in Section 2 with the appro-
priate modifications. However, more detailed studies are
needed.
7. Conclusion
This paper introduced a ubiquitous wireless network
architecture leading to the post-IP network and discussed
its impacts on the optical network architectures support-
ing both the IP and post-IP networks. First, we introduced
a lambda access network architecture with optical virtual
concatenation for extremely broadband grid applications.
With this architecture, the low latency requirements of
the applications are supported by using a group of wave-
lengths to transfer bulk data. Computers are the end sys-
tems for such high end applications. In most research on
advanced optical networks, end systems are assumed to
be computers, but the optical networks are expected to
work not only for computer applications, but also for the
ultimate ubiquitous wireless applications in the future.
The history of disruptive network innovations indicates
that terminals or appliances determine the network
architectures. Active RFID appliances are introduced to
play major roles, even for the ultimate ubiquitous wireless
applications of the future. The grand challenges are sum-
marized from the viewpoint of ubiquitous network deploy-
ment. A new architecture called ADUN was introduced to
cope with the grand challenges. The ADUN is quite differ-
ent from the Internet in terms of architectural principles.
The ADUN will be a post-IP network once it becomes more
dominant than the Internet. With the ADUN, wireless
spaces are virtually extended over optical networks by
transporting 10–100 Gbps streams. Features, such as trans-
mission delay stability and multi path synchronization, are
needed in addition to low latency if we are to employ
advanced digital radio signal processing technologies. This
indicates an evolutionary direction for optical networks
as the infrastructure for both Internet and post-IP
networks.
1872 H. Ichikawa et al. / Computer Networks 52 (2008) 1864–1872

Kazunori Akabane received his B.E. and M.E.

References
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[9] T. Okadome, T. Hattori, K. Hiramatsu, Y. Yanagisawa, Project pervasive respectively. In 1988 he joined NTT Trans-
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He is a member of IEEE and IEICE.
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[14] ANSI/IEEE Standard 802.11g-2003: Wireless LAN Medium Access
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4: Further Higher Data Rate Extension in the 2.4 GHz Band, 2003. degrees in engineering from Hokkaido Uni-
versity in 1982 and 1984, respectively. He
joined NTT Electrical Communication Labora-
Haruhisa Ichikawa received B.S., M.S. and Dr. tories in 1984, where he was engaged in
Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from the research on CAD system for communication
University of Tokyo in 1974, 1976 and 1989, devices. His present research includes data
respectively. He joined NTT laboratories in processing technologies in ubiquitous com-
1976, where he was engaged in fundamental puting. He is currently Senior Research Engi-
research on communications software and neer, Supervisor of NTT Network Innovation
distributed computing. He proposed and Laboratories.
conducted many R&D projects for software,
Internet, information sharing platform, and
ubiquitous networks, including business
incubation. He was responsible for funda-
mental NTT R&D as the executive director of
Science and Core Laboratory Group. He is a Professor at the University of
Electro-Communications, Tokyo, since September, 2007. He is a member
of IEEE, IEICE and IPSJ.

Masashi Shimizu received the B.E. and M.E.

degrees in mechanical engineering from Keio
University, Yokohama, in 1986, 1988, respec-
tively. In 1988, he joined NTT Wireless System
Laboratories, Yokosuka, Japan. He has been
engaged in research on pointing control for
deployable space antenna and surface error
compensation by feed distribution control.
His recent interest is active RFID and its
applications. He is currently Senior Research
Engineer, Supervisor, Wireless System Inno-
vation Laboratory, NTT Network Innovation
Laboratories. He is a member of IEICE.