Towards a Connected Heterogeneous All-Medium Integrated Network (CHAIN) for Converged Connectivity Across Land, Sea, Air, and Space

Abstract

Next-generation connectivity depends on data traversing multiple physical media within a single end-to-end path, yet research in optical fibre, free-space optical and radio wireless, non-terrestrial networks, and underwater communications has advanced largely in isolation. This fragmentation has a wider adverse impact on communication performance, deployment and adaption as the most demanding open problems in next-generation connectivity, cross-medium channel characterisation, transport-layer protocol design across heterogeneous latency regimes, and cross-domain orchestration, sit at the boundaries between domains and can only be addressed by bringing these challenges together in cross-domain systems. Space-air-ground integrated network research has begun to treat three domains analytically, and its recent extension to the sea surface represents the most ambitious multi-domain framework proposed to date, yet neither has produced experimental results, a deployed system, or a standards engagement. The subsurface and maritime domain remains absent from both. This paper proposes the connected heterogeneous all-medium integrated network (CHAIN), a framework that treats the undersea, maritime, terrestrial, aerial and space domains as a single design space. We identify an all-photonic network backbone as the unifying physical infrastructure, Artificial intelligence (AI)-driven orchestration as the cross-domain control layer, and the joints between domains as a unification challenge. We survey the state of the art across all domains and the existing cross-domain literature, develop the CHAIN framework and its technical pillars, characterise the five core open problems the field must resolve, and set out a research roadmap from near-term measurement campaigns and testbed validation through cross-medium field trials to global-scale deployment.