bone

EU FP7 – Building the Future Optical Network in Europe (BONE)

The BONE-proposal builds on the foundations laid out by the e-Photon/ONe projects in the previous Framework Programme. This Network of Excellence has successfully brought together over several years the research activities within Europe in the field of Optical Networks. The BONE-project intends to validate this effort by stimulating a more intensified collaboration, exchange of researchers and building on Virtual Centres of Excellence that can serve to European industry with education & training, research tools & testlabs and pave the way to new technologies & architectures.

The Network of the Future, which is the central theme of this Call, will have to cope with a wide variety of applications running on a wide variety of terminals and with an increasing number of connected devices and increasing speed and data-loads. Within this context, issues as convergence between mobile and fixed networks, or issues regarding the optimised broadband access in the last mile using a wide variety of technologies such as DSL, cable, WiMAX, WiFi, PLC,… are currently under investigation to adapt the current network to these increasing requirements for better performance.

The BONE-proposal looks further into the future and builds the final “Network of the Future”:

  • a high capacity, flexible, reconfigurable and self-healing optical Core & Metro network which supports the transport of massive amounts of data.
  • a FTTx solution in which the “x” is as close as possible to the home, at the home, or even in the home. From this point the user is connected using terminal-specific technologies (wireless to handheld devices, fiber to home cinema, wireless to laptop, fixed connection to desktop…
  • BONE clearly identifies the existence of the current technologies and also recognizes the fact that users also require the mobility of wireless access, but this mobile connection ends at a gateway or access points and from there a fixed connection is required and this fixed connection will finally be an optical link.

Website: http://ict-bone.eu/