Self-learning approaches for real optical networks

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Self-learning approaches to facilitate the deployment of ML algorithms in real networks are analyzed and their performance evaluated through an illustrative use case. Results show large benefits of collective self-learning with centralized retraining.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Learning life cycle to speed up autonomic optical transmission and networking adoption

Autonomic optical transmission and networking requires machine learning (ML) models to be trained with large datasets. However, the availability of enough real data to produce accurate ML models is rarely ensured since new optical equipment and techniques are continuously being deployed in the network. One option is to generate data from simulations and lab experiments, but such data could not cover the whole features space and would translate into inaccuracies in the ML models. In this paper, we propose an ML-based algorithm life cycle to facilitate ML deployment in real operator networks. The dataset for ML training can be initially populated based on the results from simulations and lab experiments. Once ML models are generated, ML retraining can be performed after inaccuracies are detected to improve their precision. Illustrative numerical results show the benefits of the proposed learning cycle for general use cases. In addition, two specific use cases are proposed and demonstrated that implement different learning strategies: (i) a two-phase strategy performing out-of-field training using data from simulations and lab experiments with generic equipment, followed by an in-field adaptation to support heterogeneous equipment (the accuracy of this strategy is shown for a use case of failure detection and identification), and (ii) in-field retraining, where ML models are retrained after detecting model inaccuracies. Different approaches are analyzed and evaluated for a use case of autonomic transmission, where results show the significant benefits of collective learning.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Predictive autonomic transmission for low-cost low-margin metro optical networks

Low-cost low-margin implementation plays an essential role in upgrading optical metro networks required for future 5G ecosystem. In this regard, low-resolution analog-to-digital converters can be used in coherent optical transponders to reduce cost and power consumption. However, the resulting transmission systems become more sensitive to physical layer fluctuations like the events caused by fiber stressing. Such fluctuations might have a strong impact on the quality of transmission (QoT) of the signals. To guarantee robust operation, soft decision forward error correction (FEC) techniques are required to guarantee zero post-FEC bit error rate (BER) transmission, which could increase the power consumption of the receiver and thus operational expenses. In this paper, we aim at minimizing power consumption while keeping zero post-FEC errors by means of a predictive autonomic transmission agent (ATA) based on machine learning. We present a sophisticated ATA model that, taking advantage of real-time monitoring of state of polarization traces and the corresponding pre-FEC BER, predicts the right FEC configuration for short-term operation, thus requiring minimum power consumption. In addition, we propose a complementary long-term prediction of excessive pre-FEC BER to enable remote reconfiguration at the transmitter side through the network controller. A set of experimental measurements is used to train and validate the proposed ATA system. Exhaustive numerical analysis allows concluding that ATA based on artificial neural network predictors achieves the maximum QoT robustness with 80% power consumption reductions compared to static FEC configuration.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission for the H2020-ICT-2016-2 METRO-HAUL project (G.A. 761727), from the AEI/FEDER TWINS project (TEC2017-90097-R), and from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Monitoring and data analytics-triggered reconfiguration in partially disaggregated optical networks

©2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.We present ADONIS, which stands for Aggregator/Disaggregator for Optical Network equIpmentS, a novel open device agent able to construct logical network devices from (dis)aggregation of physical components in order to expose meaningful network devices to the SDN controller. We experimentally assess it by means of a control closed-loop involving ADONIS, a Software Defined Network controller, a Monitoring and Data Analytics system, and a novel reconfiguration tool, SMART-A.The research leading to these results has received funding from the EC through the METRO-HAUL (G.A. nº 761727).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Demonstration of monitoring and data analytics-triggered reconfiguration in partially disaggregated optical networks

©2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.We demonstrate a novel agent for optical disaggregated optical networks. When the Monitoring and Data Analytics detects a degradation, it recommends the SDN controller to trigger a network reconfiguration computed by a novel planning tool.The research leading to these results has received funding from the EC through the METRO-HAUL (G.A. nº 761727).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

IDEALIST control and service management solutions for dynamic and adaptive flexi-grid DWDM networks

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. R. Muñoz, V. López, R. Casellas, O. González de Dios, F. Cugini, N. Sambo, A. d'Errico, O. Gerstel, D. King, S. López-Buedo, P. Layec, A. Cimmino, R. Martínez, and R. Moro, "IDEALIST control and service management solutions for dynamic and adaptive flexi-grid DWDM networks", in Future Network and Mobile Summit, 2013, pp. 1-10Wavelength Switched Optical Networks (WSON) were designed with the premise that all channels in a network have the same spectrum needs, based on the ITU-T DWDM grid. However, this rigid grid-based approach is not adapted to the spectrum requirements of the signals that are best candidates for long-reach transmission and high-speed data rates of 400Gbps and beyond. An innovative approach is to evolve the fixed DWDM grid to a flexible grid, in which the optical spectrum is partitioned into fixed-sized spectrum slices. This allows facilitating the required amount of optical bandwidth and spectrum for an elastic optical connection to be dynamically and adaptively allocated by assigning the necessary number of slices of spectrum. The ICT IDEALIST project will provide the architectural design, protocol specification, implementation, evaluation and standardization of a control plane and a network and service management system. This architecture and tools are necessary to introduce dynamicity, elasticity and adaptation in flexi-grid DWDM networks. This paper provides an overview of the objectives, framework, functional requirements and use cases of the elastic control plane and the adaptive network and service management system targeted in the ICT IDEALIST project.This work was partially funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 through the Integrated Project (IP) IDEALIST under grant agreement nº 317999

Experimental Demonstration of Multivendor and Multidomain EON With Data and Control Interoperability Over a Pan-European Test Bed

The operation of multidomain and multivendor EONs can be achieved by interoperable sliceable bandwidth variable transponders (S-BVTs), a GMPLS/BGP-LS-based control plane, and a planning tool. The control plane is extended to include the control of S-BVTs and elastic cross connects, which combine a large port-count fiber-switch (optical backplane) and bandwidth-variable wavelength-selective switches, enabling the end-to-end provisioning and recovery of network services. A multipartner testbed is built to demonstrate and validate the proposed end-to-end architecture. Interoperability among S-BVTs is experimentally tested between different implementations. In this case, transponders are configured using the proposed control plane. The achieved performance with hard-decision and soft-decision FECs using only the information distributed by the control plane is measured against the performance of the single-vendor implementation, where proprietary information is used, demonstrating error-free transmission up to 300 km.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control

Reports of honey bee population decline has spurred many national efforts to understand the extent of the problem and to identify causative or associated factors. However, our collective understanding of the factors has been hampered by a lack of joined up trans-national effort. Moreover, the impacts of beekeeper knowledge and beekeeping management practices have often been overlooked, despite honey bees being a managed pollinator. Here, we established a standardised active monitoring network for 5 798 apiaries over two consecutive years to quantify honey bee colony mortality across 17 European countries. Our data demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with small apiaries and little experience in beekeeping had double the winter mortality rate when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had symptoms of bacterial infection and heavy Varroa infestation. Our data highlight beekeeper background and apicultural practices as major drivers of honey bee colony losses. The benefits of conducting trans-national monitoring schemes and improving beekeeper training are discussed

Techniques de multiplexage spatial avec voie de retour limitée pour les systèmes multi-antennes multi-utilisateurs

This research work addresses the conception of wireless communication systems with a limited feedback link capable of offering reliability and high spectral efficiency. Higher data rates can be achieved with the use of channel knowledge at the transmitter (CSIT); however in order to guarantee the theoretical rates that are promised the feedback information needs to be accurate. This thesis focuses on uncertainties impacting the feedback link; among them are studied the quantization of information or the non-error free feedback channel. For different levels of imperfect CSIT, we have proposed new transceivers aiming at reducing the CSIT uncertainty as well as a characterization of reliable transmission. Our interest lies in spatial multiplexing systems with a low-rate feedback channel. However practical codes at disposal, resulting from Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCS), are in limited number. A loss of spectral efficiency can therefore be observed. To compensate for this gap of performances with theoretical limits, two transceivers schemes are proposed. The mutual information being a reference metric to choose the discrete MCS, the objective is then to design wireless systems guaranteeing robustness in presence of imperfect channel estimation and quantization errors. Although it is often assumed that the feedback channel is error-free, a more realistic model should clearly include such noise effects. A noisy feedback model is introduced where the erasure channel probability depends on the channel realizations and on the coding schemes. Moreover a multi-stage feedback allows the transmitter to refine its channel knowledge with the reception of additional feedback bits.Ces travaux de recherche adressent le problème de la conception de systèmes de communication capables d'offrir fiabilité et hautes efficacités spectrales avec un lien de retour (partiel) du récepteur vers l'émetteur. De plus hauts débits peuvent être offerts grâce à une connaissance à l'émission du canal de transmission (CSIT) permettant d'exploiter au mieux ses propriétés ; cependant seule la fiabilité de cette information garantit réellement d'atteindre les débits théoriques promis. L'objectif de la thèse consiste à étudier les incertitudes sur le canal de retour, et plus particulièrement la quantification des informations à remonter à l'émetteur ou les erreurs subies lors de la transmission sur la voie de retour. Pour plusieurs degrés de CSIT imparfait, de nouvelles structures d'émission et de réception adaptés à ces imperfections ont été proposées ainsi qu'une caractérisation des limites d'une transmission fiable. La perte d'efficacité spectrale lors de la prise en compte des schémas de modulation et codage (MCS) conduit à s'intéresser à la réduction du bruit de quantification dû aux entrées discrètes. L'attribution des MCS étant établie sur l'information mutuelle, il convient de caractériser les limites théoriques de la communication suite à la prise en compte des erreurs du CSI induites par l'estimation de canal imparfaite et à la quantification du CSI. En cherchant enfin à modéliser les événements d'erreurs survenant sur le lien de retour, un nouveau modèle de voie de retour bruitée est proposé. De plus en raffinant l'information par niveaux successifs (feedback multi-niveaux), le CSI à l'émission peut être utilisé au fur et à mesure de sa réception

Techniques de multiplexage spatial avec voie de retour limitée pour les systèmes multi-antennes multi-utilisateurs

Ces travaux de recherche adressent le problème de la conception de systèmes de communication capables d'offrir fiabilité et hautes efficacités spectrales avec un lien de retour (partiel) du récepteur vers l émetteur. De plus hauts débits peuvent être offerts grâce à une connaissance à l'émission du canal de transmission (CSIT) permettant d exploiter au mieux ses propriétés ; cependant seule la fiabilité de cette information garantit réellement d'atteindre les débits théoriques promis. L objectif de la thèse consiste à étudier les incertitudes sur le canal de retour, et plus particulièrement la quantification des informations à remonter à l émetteur ou les erreurs subies lors de la transmission sur la voie de retour. Pour plusieurs degrés de CSIT imparfait, de nouvelles structures d émission et de réception adaptés à ces imperfections ont été proposées ainsi qu une caractérisation des limites d'une transmission fiable. La perte d efficacité spectrale lors de la prise en compte des schémas de modulation et codage (MCS) conduit à s intéresser à la réduction du bruit de quantification dû aux entrées discrètes. L attribution des MCS étant établie sur l information mutuelle, il convient de caractériser les limites théoriques de la communication suite à la prise en compte des erreurs du CSI induites par l estimation de canal imparfaite et à la quantification du CSI. En cherchant enfin à modéliser les événements d erreurs survenant sur le lien de retour, un nouveau modèle de voie de retour bruitée est proposé. De plus en raffinant l information par niveaux successifs (feedback multi-niveaux), le CSI à l émission peut être utilisé au fur et à mesure de sa réception.This research work addresses the conception of wireless communication systems with a limited feedback link capable of offering reliability and high spectral efficiency. Higher data rates can be achieved with the use of channel knowledge at the transmitter (CSIT); however in order to guarantee the theoretical rates that are promised the feedback information needs to be accurate. This thesis focuses on uncertainties impacting the feedback link; among them are studied the quantization of information or the non-error free feedback channel. For different levels of imperfect CSIT, we have proposed new transceivers aiming at reducing the CSIT uncertainty as well as a characterization of reliable transmission. Our interest lies in spatial multiplexing systems with a low-rate feedback channel. However practical codes at disposal, resulting from Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCS), are in limited number. A loss of spectral efficiency can therefore be observed. To compensate for this gap of performances with theoretical limits, two transceivers schemes are proposed. The mutual information being a reference metric to choose the discrete MCS, the objective is then to design wireless systems guaranteeing robustness in presence of imperfect channel estimation and quantization errors. Although it is often assumed that the feedback channel is error-free, a more realistic model should clearly include such noise effects. A noisy feedback model is introduced where the erasure channel probability depends on the channel realizations and on the coding schemes. Moreover a multi-stage feedback allows the transmitter to refine its channel knowledge with the reception of additional feedback bits.ORSAY-PARIS 11-BU Sciences (914712101) / SudocSudocFranceF