ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of fiber-wireless (FiWi) enhanced 4G networks as the underlying communications infrastructure for enabling the emerging delay-sensitive interactive Tactile Internet applications. It aims to realize local and/or non-local teleoperation over FiWi enhanced 4G networks, leveraging low-cost data-centric Ethernet technologies in both fronthaul and backhaul. FiWi enhanced long-term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) HetNets represent a compelling solution to enable 4G cellular networks to meet the key requirements of low-latency and high-availability. The subtle difference between the Tactile Internet and Internet of Things (IoT) may be best expressed in terms of underlying communications paradigms and enabling end devices. The Tactile Internet involves the inherent human-in-the-loop nature of human-to-machine interaction, whereas the IoT is centered around autonomous machine-to-machine communications without any human interaction. The Tactile Internet is expected to enhance conventional audiovisual and data communications by the haptic modality. The chapter describes artificial intelligence-embedded multi-access edge computing-enabled FiWi-enhanced LTE-A HetNets architecture.
