Fast Coper for Broadband Access: An Overview

This is an overview of the ongoing FAST Copper project, which is aimed at substantial improvements in rate, reach, reliability, and quality in copper-last-mile broadband access through fiber/DSL deployment, engineering innovations, and fundamental research. The project is funded by NSF, and is currently pursued jointly by Princeton University, Stanford University, and Fraser Research Lab. In this article, we outline the motivations, challenges, and research issues associated with the project, and report some of the recent results by the Princeton team in each of the four dimensions: frequency, amplitude, space, and time.