SDN enabled dynamically reconfigurable high capacity optical access architecture for converged services

Dynamically reconfigurable time-division multiplexing (TDM) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) long-reach passive optical networks (PONs) can support the reduction of nodes and network interfaces by enabling a fully meshed flat optical core. In this paper we demonstrate the flexibility of the TDM-DWDM PON architecture, which can enable the convergence of multiple service types on a single physical layer. Heterogeneous services and modulation formats, i.e. residential 10G PON channels, business 100G dedicated channel and wireless fronthaul, are demonstrated co-existing on the same long reach TDM-DWDM PON system, with up to 100km reach, 512 users and emulated system load of 40 channels, employing amplifier nodes with either erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) or semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). For the first time end-to-end software defined networking (SDN) management of the access and core network elements is also implemented and integrated with the PON physical layer in order to demonstrate two service use cases: a fast protection mechanism with end-to-end service restoration in the case of a primary link failure; and dynamic wavelength allocation (DWA) in response to an increased traffic demand

Point-to-point overlay of a 100Gb/s DP-QPSK channel in LR-PONs for urban and rural areas

The continuing growth in information demand from fixed and mobile end-users, coupled with the need to deliver this content in an economically viable manner, is driving new innovations in access networks. In particular, it is becoming increasingly important to find new ways to enable the coexistence of heterogeneous services types which may require different signal modulation formats over the same fiber infrastructure. For example, the same physical layer can potentially be used to deliver shared 10Gb/s services to residential customers, dedicated point-to-point (P2P) 100Gb/s services to business customers, and wireless fronthaul, in a highly cost-effective manner. In this converged scenario, the performance of phase modulated signals can be heavily affected by nonlinear crosstalk from co-propagating on-off-keying (OOK) channels. In this paper, the overlay of a 100G P2P dual-polarization quadrature phase-shift keying (DP-QPSK) channel in a long-reach passive optical network (LR-PON) in the presence of co-propagating 10Gb/s OOK neighboring channels is studied for two different PON topologies. The first LR-PON topology is particularly suited for densely populated areas while the second is aimed at rural, sparsely populated areas. The experimental results indicate that with an emulated load of 40 channels the urban architecture can support up to 100km span and 512 users, while the rural architecture can support up to 120km span and 1024 users. Finally, a system model is developed to predict the system performance and system margins for configurations different from the experimental setups and to carry out design optimization that could in principle lead to even more efficient and robust schemes

Investigation of wavelength tunable laser modules for use in future optically switched dense wavelength division multiplexed networks

This thesis investigates the use of fast wavelength tunable laser modules in future optically switched dense wavelength division multiplexed networks (DWDM). The worldwide demand for increasingly greater broadband access has thus far been satisfied by the use of DWDM networks, enabled by the development of the erbium doped amplifier. However as this demand continues to grow electronic switching at network nodes will become a limiting factor, creating a potential bandwidth mismatch between the fibre capacities and switching capacity. Optical switching has been proposed to overcome this electronic bottleneck and fully utilize the enormous bandwidth offered by fibre. Fast tunable lasers (TLs) are a key technology in this area, enabling fast wavelength switching. Experimental work involving the fast wavelength switching of sampled grating distributed Bragg reflector TL modules is presented. Spurious mode generation during wavelength tuning is shown to cause severe cross-channel interference on other data channels in a DWDM test bed. Bit error rate (BER) results demonstrate that a integrated semiconductor optical amplifier can greatly reduce system degradation caused by asynchronous switching of multiple TLs. This is achieved by optically blanking the laser output during channel transition for a period of 60 ns. Immediately after the blanking period a wavelength drift due to the TL module wavelength locking is found to cause cross channel interference and introduce an error floor >1 e-4 on the BER performance characteristic of an adjacent channel in a 12.5 GHz spaced DWDM network. This drift is characterised, using a selfheterodyne and a filter based approach – Error free performance is subsequently demonstrated by using an extended blanking period of 260 ns or by using subcarrier multiplexing transmission and phase selective demodulation before detection. A DWDM optical label switching system, utilizing 40 Gbit/s payload data with low data rate labels placed on a 40 GHz sub-carrier and using TL transmitters is presented. Channel performance is monitored on a static channel as a second data channel is tuned into an adjacent channel on a 100 GHz spaced grid. Error free performance is demonstrated only for the channel payload – Time resolved BER results in agreement with the TL wavelength drift are measured and demonstrate a detrimental influence of the drift on the sub-carrier label performance

Investigation of performance issues affecting optical circuit and packet switched WDM networks

Optical switching represents the next step in the evolution of optical networks. This thesis describes work that was carried out to examine performance issues which can occur in two distinct varieties of optical switching networks. Slow optical switching in which lightpaths are requested, provisioned and torn down when no longer required is known as optical circuit switching (OCS). Services enabled by OCS include wavelength routing, dynamic bandwidth allocation and protection switching. With network elements such as reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and optical cross connects (OXCs) now being deployed along with the generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) control plane this represents the current state of the art in commercial networks. These networks often employ erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) to boost the optical signal to noise ratio of the WDM channels and as channel configurations change, wavelength dependent gain variations in the EDFAs can lead to channel power divergence that can result in significant performance degradation. This issue is examined in detail using a reconfigurable wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) network testbed and results show the severe impact that channel reconfiguration can have on transmission performance. Following the slow switching work the focus shifts to one of the key enabling technologies for fast optical switching, namely the tunable laser. Tunable lasers which can switch on the nanosecond timescale will be required in the transmitters and wavelength converters of optical packet switching networks. The switching times and frequency drifts, both of commercially available lasers, and of novel devices are investigated and performance issues which can arise due to this frequency drift are examined. An optical packet switching transmitter based on a novel label switching technique and employing one of the fast tunable lasers is designed and employed in a dual channel WDM packet switching system. In depth performance evaluations of this labelling scheme and packet switching system show the detrimental impact that wavelength drift can have on such systems

Control plane routing in photonic networks

The work described in the thesis investigates the features of control plane functionality for routing wavelength paths to serve a set of sub-wavelength demands. The work takes account of routing problems only found in physical network layers, notably analogue transmission impairments. Much work exists on routing connections for dynamic Wavelength-Routed Optical Networks (WRON) and to demonstrate their advantages over static photonic networks. However, the question of how agile the WRON should be has not been addressed quantitatively. A categorization of switching speeds is extended, and compared with the reasons for requiring network agility. The increase of effective network capacity achieved with increased agility is quantified through new simulations. It is demonstrated that this benefit only occurs within a certain window of network fill; achievement of significant gain from a more-agile network may be prevented by the operator’s chosen tolerable blocking probability. The Wavelength Path Sharing (WPS) scheme uses semi-static wavelengths to form unidirectional photonic shared buses, reducing the need for photonic agility. Making WPS more practical, novel improved routing algorithms are proposed and evaluated for both execution time and performance, offering significant benefit in speed at modest cost in efficiency. Photonic viability is the question of whether a path that the control plane can configure will work with an acceptable bit error rate (BER) despite the physical transmission impairments encountered. It is shown that, although there is no single approach that is simple, quick to execute and generally applicable at this time, under stated conditions approximations may be made to achieve a general solution that will be fast enough to enable some applications of agility. The presented algorithms, analysis of optimal network agility and viability assessment approaches can be applied in the analysis and design of future photonic control planes and network architectures

Cognition procedures for optical network design and optimization

Telecom carriers have to adapt their networks to accommodate a growing volume of users, services and traffic. Thus, they have to search a continuous maximization of efficiency and reduction in costs. This thesis identifies an opportunity to accomplish this aim by reducing operation margins applied in the optical link power budgets, in optical transport networks. From an operational perspective, margin reduction will lead to a fall of the required investments on transceivers in the whole transport network. Based on how human learn, a cognitive approach is introduced and evaluated to reduce the System Margin. This operation margin takes into account, among other constraints, the long-term ageing process of the network infrastructure. Telecom operators normally apply a conservative and fixed value established during the design and commissioning phases. The cognitive approach proposes a flexible and variable value, adapted to the network conditions. It is based on the case-based reasoning machine learning technique, which has been further developped. Novel learning schemes are presented and evaluated. The cognition solution proposes a new lower launched power guaranteeing the quality of service of the new incoming lightpath. It will lead to provide transmission power savings with appropiate success rates when applying the cognitive approach. To this end, it relies on transmission values applied in past and successful similar network situations. They are stored in a knowledge base or memory of the system. Moreover, regarding the knowledge base, a static and a dynamic approaches have been developped and presented. In the last case, five new dynamic learning algorithms are presented and evaluated. In the static context, savings in transmission power up to 48% are achieved and the resulting System Margin reduction. Furthermore, the dynamic renewal of the knowledge base improves mean savings in launched power up to 7% or 18% with respect to the static approach, depending on the path. Thus, the cognitive approach appears as useful to be applied in commercial optical transport networks with the aim of reducing the operational System Margin.Los operadores de telecomunicaciones tienen que adaptar constantemente sus redes para acoger el volumen creciente de usuarios, servicios y tráfico asociado. Han de buscar constantemente una maximización de la eficiencia en la operación, así como una reducción continua de costes. Esta tesis identifica una oportunidad para alcanzar este objetivo por medio de la reducción de los márgenes operacionales aplicados en los balances de potencia en una red óptica de transporte. Desde un punto de vista operacional, la reducción de márgenes operativos conlleva una optimización de las inversiones requeridas en transceivers, entre otros puntos. Así, basándonos en cómo aprendemos los humanos, se introduce y evalúa una aproximación cognitiva para reducir el System Margin. Este margen operativo se introduce en el balance de potencia, entre otros puntos, para compensar el proceso de envejecimiento a largo plazo de la infraestrcutura de red. Los operadores emplean normalmente un valor fijo y conservador, que se establece durante el diseño y comisionado de la red. Nuestra aproximación cognitiva propone en su lugar un valor flexible y variable, que se adapta a las condiciones de red actuales. Se basa en la técnica de machine learning conocida como case-based reasoning, que se desarrolla más profundamente. Se han propuesto y evaluado nuevos esquemas de aprendizaje. La solución cognitiva propone un nuevo valor más bajo de potencia transmitida, que garantiza la calidad de servicio requerida por el nuevo lighpath entrante. La propuesta logra ahorros en la potencia transmitida, a la vez que garantiza una tasa de éxito correcta cuando aplicamos esta solución cognitiva. Para ello, se apoya en la potencia transmitida en situaciones pasadas y similares a la actual, donde se transmitió una potencia que aseguró el correcto establecimiento del lighpath. Esta información se almacena en una base de conocimiento. En este sentido, se han desarrollado y presentado dos aproximaciones: una base de conocimiento estática y otra dinámica. En el caso del contexto dinámico, se han desarrollado y evaluado cinco nuevos algoritmos de aprendizaje. En el contexto estático, se consigue un ahorro en potencia de hasta un 48%, con la correspondiente reducción del System Margin. En el contexto dinámico, la actualización online de la base de conocimiento proporciona adicionalmente una ganancia en potencia transmitida con respecto a la aproximación estática de hasta un 7% o un 18%, dependiendo de la ruta. De esta forma se comprueba que la propuesta cognitiva se revela como útil y aplicable sobre una red óptica de transporte comercial con el objetivo de reducir el margen operativo conocido como System Margin

Cognition procedures for optical network design and optimization

Telecom carriers have to adapt their networks to accommodate a growing volume of users, services and traffic. Thus, they have to search a continuous maximization of efficiency and reduction in costs. This thesis identifies an opportunity to accomplish this aim by reducing operation margins applied in the optical link power budgets, in optical transport networks. From an operational perspective, margin reduction will lead to a fall of the required investments on transceivers in the whole transport network. Based on how human learn, a cognitive approach is introduced and evaluated to reduce the System Margin. This operation margin takes into account, among other constraints, the long-term ageing process of the network infrastructure. Telecom operators normally apply a conservative and fixed value established during the design and commissioning phases. The cognitive approach proposes a flexible and variable value, adapted to the network conditions. It is based on the case-based reasoning machine learning technique, which has been further developped. Novel learning schemes are presented and evaluated. The cognition solution proposes a new lower launched power guaranteeing the quality of service of the new incoming lightpath. It will lead to provide transmission power savings with appropiate success rates when applying the cognitive approach. To this end, it relies on transmission values applied in past and successful similar network situations. They are stored in a knowledge base or memory of the system. Moreover, regarding the knowledge base, a static and a dynamic approaches have been developped and presented. In the last case, five new dynamic learning algorithms are presented and evaluated. In the static context, savings in transmission power up to 48% are achieved and the resulting System Margin reduction. Furthermore, the dynamic renewal of the knowledge base improves mean savings in launched power up to 7% or 18% with respect to the static approach, depending on the path. Thus, the cognitive approach appears as useful to be applied in commercial optical transport networks with the aim of reducing the operational System Margin.Los operadores de telecomunicaciones tienen que adaptar constantemente sus redes para acoger el volumen creciente de usuarios, servicios y tráfico asociado. Han de buscar constantemente una maximización de la eficiencia en la operación, así como una reducción continua de costes. Esta tesis identifica una oportunidad para alcanzar este objetivo por medio de la reducción de los márgenes operacionales aplicados en los balances de potencia en una red óptica de transporte. Desde un punto de vista operacional, la reducción de márgenes operativos conlleva una optimización de las inversiones requeridas en transceivers, entre otros puntos. Así, basándonos en cómo aprendemos los humanos, se introduce y evalúa una aproximación cognitiva para reducir el System Margin. Este margen operativo se introduce en el balance de potencia, entre otros puntos, para compensar el proceso de envejecimiento a largo plazo de la infraestrcutura de red. Los operadores emplean normalmente un valor fijo y conservador, que se establece durante el diseño y comisionado de la red. Nuestra aproximación cognitiva propone en su lugar un valor flexible y variable, que se adapta a las condiciones de red actuales. Se basa en la técnica de machine learning conocida como case-based reasoning, que se desarrolla más profundamente. Se han propuesto y evaluado nuevos esquemas de aprendizaje. La solución cognitiva propone un nuevo valor más bajo de potencia transmitida, que garantiza la calidad de servicio requerida por el nuevo lighpath entrante. La propuesta logra ahorros en la potencia transmitida, a la vez que garantiza una tasa de éxito correcta cuando aplicamos esta solución cognitiva. Para ello, se apoya en la potencia transmitida en situaciones pasadas y similares a la actual, donde se transmitió una potencia que aseguró el correcto establecimiento del lighpath. Esta información se almacena en una base de conocimiento. En este sentido, se han desarrollado y presentado dos aproximaciones: una base de conocimiento estática y otra dinámica. En el caso del contexto dinámico, se han desarrollado y evaluado cinco nuevos algoritmos de aprendizaje. En el contexto estático, se consigue un ahorro en potencia de hasta un 48%, con la correspondiente reducción del System Margin. En el contexto dinámico, la actualización online de la base de conocimiento proporciona adicionalmente una ganancia en potencia transmitida con respecto a la aproximación estática de hasta un 7% o un 18%, dependiendo de la ruta. De esta forma se comprueba que la propuesta cognitiva se revela como útil y aplicable sobre una red óptica de transporte comercial con el objetivo de reducir el margen operativo conocido como System Margin.Postprint (published version