New Perspectives on Future Smart FiWi Networks: Scalability, Reliability, and Energy Efficiency

Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) network, as an integration of optical fiber network and wireless access network, has attracted intensive research interest and enjoyed significant growth in its applications over the last two decades. Besides bringing great opportunities for the development of FiWi networks, the new applications and techniques, like the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), raise unprecedented challenges in different aspects of FiWi integration. Based on such observation, we provide in this paper a comprehensive survey of recent progress and ongoing research works in the aspects of network architecture, QoS provisioning, scalability improving, reliability enhancing, energy saving, as well as standardization activities and case studies. Furthermore, new trends and challenging issues on future smart FiWi networks are identified and discussed in details.