Virtualization of elastic optical networks and regenerators with traffic grooming

An elastic optical network (EON) plays an important role in transport technology for virtualization of networks. A key aspect of EONs is to establish lightpaths (virtual links) with exactly the amount of spectrum that is needed and with the possibility of grooming, the process of grouping many small traffic flows into larger units, creating a super-lightpath. Grooming eliminates the need for many guard bands between lightpaths and also saves transceivers; however, it often leads to the need to perform optical–electrical–optical conversions to multiple-data-rate optical signals at intermediate nodes. The aim of this paper is to provide a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation, as well as heuristic and meta-heuristic approaches, for the design of multiple virtual optical networks (VONs) in an elastic optical substrate network with bandwidth-variable lightpaths, modulation format constraints, and virtual elastic regenerator placement. Traffic grooming is allowed inside each VON, and a distance-adaptive modulation format technique is employed to guarantee efficiency in terms of bandwidth for a physical substrate, subject to several virtual topologies. A reduced MILP formulation without grooming capability is also proposed for comparison. The complete MILP formulation jointly solves the virtual topology design, regenerator placement, and grooming problems, as well as the routing, modulation, and spectrum assignment (RMSA) problem. The reduced MILP formulation, heuristics, and meta-heuristic, on the other hand, separate the virtual topology design problem from the RMSA problem. It is shown that the grooming approach can provide good results, since it solves the problem for a complete design when compared to the approach without grooming. Furthermore, heuristic solutions for large networks are proposed, which present good performance (in terms of saving spectrum) for the design with large instances

An Overview on Application of Machine Learning Techniques in Optical Networks

Today's telecommunication networks have become sources of enormous amounts of widely heterogeneous data. This information can be retrieved from network traffic traces, network alarms, signal quality indicators, users' behavioral data, etc. Advanced mathematical tools are required to extract meaningful information from these data and take decisions pertaining to the proper functioning of the networks from the network-generated data. Among these mathematical tools, Machine Learning (ML) is regarded as one of the most promising methodological approaches to perform network-data analysis and enable automated network self-configuration and fault management. The adoption of ML techniques in the field of optical communication networks is motivated by the unprecedented growth of network complexity faced by optical networks in the last few years. Such complexity increase is due to the introduction of a huge number of adjustable and interdependent system parameters (e.g., routing configurations, modulation format, symbol rate, coding schemes, etc.) that are enabled by the usage of coherent transmission/reception technologies, advanced digital signal processing and compensation of nonlinear effects in optical fiber propagation. In this paper we provide an overview of the application of ML to optical communications and networking. We classify and survey relevant literature dealing with the topic, and we also provide an introductory tutorial on ML for researchers and practitioners interested in this field. Although a good number of research papers have recently appeared, the application of ML to optical networks is still in its infancy: to stimulate further work in this area, we conclude the paper proposing new possible research directions

Disaster-Resilient Control Plane Design and Mapping in Software-Defined Networks

Communication networks, such as core optical networks, heavily depend on their physical infrastructure, and hence they are vulnerable to man-made disasters, such as Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) or Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) attacks, as well as to natural disasters. Large-scale disasters may cause huge data loss and connectivity disruption in these networks. As our dependence on network services increases, the need for novel survivability methods to mitigate the effects of disasters on communication networks becomes a major concern. Software-Defined Networking (SDN), by centralizing control logic and separating it from physical equipment, facilitates network programmability and opens up new ways to design disaster-resilient networks. On the other hand, to fully exploit the potential of SDN, along with data-plane survivability, we also need to design the control plane to be resilient enough to survive network failures caused by disasters. Several distributed SDN controller architectures have been proposed to mitigate the risks of overload and failure, but they are optimized for limited faults without addressing the extent of large-scale disaster failures. For disaster resiliency of the control plane, we propose to design it as a virtual network, which can be solved using Virtual Network Mapping techniques. We select appropriate mapping of the controllers over the physical network such that the connectivity among the controllers (controller-to-controller) and between the switches to the controllers (switch-to-controllers) is not compromised by physical infrastructure failures caused by disasters. We formally model this disaster-aware control-plane design and mapping problem, and demonstrate a significant reduction in the disruption of controller-to-controller and switch-to-controller communication channels using our approach.Comment: 6 page

On QoS-assured degraded provisioning in service-differentiated multi-layer elastic optical networks

The emergence of new network applications is driving network operators to not only fulfill dynamic bandwidth requirements, but offer various grades of service. Degraded provisioning provides an effective solution to flexibly allocate resources in various dimensions to reduce blocking for differentiated demands when network congestion occurs. In this work, we investigate the novel problem of online degraded provisioning in service-differentiated multi-layer networks with optical elasticity. Quality of Service (QoS) is assured by service-holding-time prolongation and immediate access as soon as the service arrives without set-up delay. We decompose the problem into degraded routing and degraded resource allocation stages, and design polynomial-time algorithms with the enhanced multi-layer architecture to increase the network flexibility in temporal and spectral dimensions. Illustrative results verify that we can achieve significant reduction of network service failures, especially for requests with higher priorities. The results also indicate that degradation in optical layer can increase the network capacity, while the degradation in electric layer provides flexible time-bandwidth exchange.Comment: accepted by IEEE GLOBECOM 201

A survey on OFDM-based elastic core optical networking

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technology that has been widely adopted in many new and emerging broadband wireless and wireline communication systems. Due to its capability to transmit a high-speed data stream using multiple spectral-overlapped lower-speed subcarriers, OFDM technology offers superior advantages of high spectrum efficiency, robustness against inter-carrier and inter-symbol interference, adaptability to server channel conditions, etc. In recent years, there have been intensive studies on optical OFDM (O-OFDM) transmission technologies, and it is considered a promising technology for future ultra-high-speed optical transmission. Based on O-OFDM technology, a novel elastic optical network architecture with immense flexibility and scalability in spectrum allocation and data rate accommodation could be built to support diverse services and the rapid growth of Internet traffic in the future. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on OFDM-based elastic optical network technologies, including basic principles of OFDM, O-OFDM technologies, the architectures of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks, and related key enabling technologies. The main advantages and issues of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks that are under research are also discussed