Towards immersive tactile Internet experiences: Low-latency FiWi enhanced mobile networks with edge intelligence [Invited]

Historically, research efforts in optical networks have focused on the goal of continuously increasing capacity rather than on lowering end-to-end latency. This slowly started to change in the access environment with post-Next-Generation Passive Optical Network 2 research. The emphasis on latency grew in importance with the introduction of 5G ultra-reliable and low-latency communication requirements. In this paper, we focus on the emerging Tactile Internet as one of the most interesting 5G low-latency applications enabling novel immersive experiences. After describing the Tactile Internet's human-in-the-loop-centric design principles and haptic communications models, we elaborate on the development of decentralized cooperative dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithms for end-to-end resource coordination in fiber-wireless (FiWi) access networks. We then use machine learning in the context of FiWi enhanced heterogeneous networks to decouple haptic feedback from the impact of extensive propagation delays. This enables humans to perceive remote task environments in time at a 1-ms granularity.