ACoRN Members Only AreaBroadband Communications
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The recent rapid development and deployment of high-speed data links and networks has sparked a revolution in communications. Whether it be wireline connections to the home and office, or wireless connections to mobile handsets, there is a fast-growing demand for broadband data. Applications include fast access to the Internet, video conference, interactive multimedia, and video-on-demand. The new technologies have been partly fuelled by the maturation, availability and affordability of digital processing hardware, but just as importantly it has been the rapid theoretical progress in communications signal processing, information theory, coding theory and network theory that has led the way.
One recent hot area is digital subscriber line (DSL) communication over the "last mile" between the network and the home. Such techniques can practically transform the existing public information network from one limited to voice, text and low resolution graphics to a powerful system capable of carrying multimedia, including full motion video to every one's home. Asymmetric DSL for example operates over existing unconditioned telephone wires and delivers data rates that can reach up to 8 Mbps on the downstream to the subscribers. More recently ADSL is increasingly being integrated with wireless local area networks (WLAN) in the home, to provide truly flexible broadband access.
Key Research Challenges
The advent of such systems in the market place has only fuelled the need for new research and development to push the boundaries and solve the outstanding system issues, many of which are of a truly fundamental theoretical nature. Such problems include overcoming channel impairments, signal attenuation due to distance, interference from neighboring users, impulsive noise, and radio interference, as well as characterizing network and link capacities and mobilities.
Australian Broadband Communications Researchers
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