Assessment of Karstification Degree in the Copacabana Group for a Tailings Dam Foundation, South Andes, Peru

The world-wide occurrence of carbonate rocks is extensive, and Peru is no exception. Many mining facilities are located in or on carbonate rocks. Under specific conditions, carbonate rocks show varying degrees of karstification, which represent a potential high risk of damage or failure to mine facilities, especially tailings and water impoundments due to subsidence or internal erosion problems. Adequate engineering measures, including proper characterization of the foundation materials, should be taken to characterize foundation materials and mitigate the risk. This paper presents the assessment of the potential of karst dissolution in the Copacabana Group underlying about 50% the foundation of a proposed tailings dam and storage facility, located in the South Andes of Peru. A thorough geotechnical site investigation program was carried out in the area, which included regional and local geological mapping, geotechnical drilling, test pits, permeability tests, effervescence test in cores, petrographic analyses, and X-Ray diffraction tests. Hydrogeological studies, such as pumping and tracer tests, were also performed by other consultants to verify the observations, conclusions, and opinions developed from the geotechnical investigation program. The results of the geotechnical investigation allowed proper characterization of the dam foundation and the tailings storage facility and estimation of the degree of karstification in the carbonate rocks of the Copacabana Group. The completed geological site characterization was then used to locate the tailings dam and impoundment area to avoid areas of pervasive karst and to implement defensive engineering measures, including grout curtains and slush grouting of smaller cavities and joints, among others

Field-Trial of Machine Learning-Assisted Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Networking with SDN

We demonstrated, for the first time, a machine-learning method to assist the coexistence between quantum and classical communication channels. Software-defined networking was used to successfully enable the key generation and transmission over a city and campus network

Ultra high performance media multicasting scheme over wavelength-routed networks

This paper presents a demonstration of an all-optical multicasting scheme for ultra high definition media over wavelength-routed networks, using Self-Phase Modulation. The feasibility of using this technique has been experimentally and theoretically evaluated for streaming rates up to 100Gbps

Application driven petabit optical networking

This paper discusses application driven petabit optical networkin

Quantum networks in the UK

We describe recent progress in quantum secured optical networks in the UK. The Cambridge Quantum Network has been operating for several years with 3 nodes separated by between 5-10 km of installed fibre. All links are secured by QKD systems operating with secure key rates in excess of 1 Mb/s, the highest recorded long term key rates in a deployed network. The network operates in the presence of 100Gb/s classical traffic with no significant reduction of secure key generation rate. In addition, the Bristol Quantum Network has four nodes 1-3km apart connected in a mesh protected by two pairs of QKD systems. The network is designed to be very dynamic, switching both QKD and WDM classical traffic to enable rapid reconfiguration and is used as a testbed for QKD protected dynamic applications. The two metropolitan networks are being connected by a 410 km QKD link, with 4 spans, the longest of which operates over 129km of fibre with an attenuation of 28dB achieving secure key rates of 2.7kb/s, the longest and highest loss QKD field trial to date. A 120km extension of the UK quantum network from Cambridge to BT Labs, Adastral Park operates with fully commercially available components and is an important testbed comprising 3 intermediate nodes and operates with 5 x 100Gb/s classical channels. This helps determine how to proceed with a large-scale commercial deployment of QKD

A Comparison of Impairment Abstractions by Multiple Users of an Installed Fiber Infrastructure

We compare three independent impairment abstractions of an installed fibre infrastructure. Abstractions agreed to within 1.3dB despite being obtained from different nodes using different terminal equipment. Validation using a DWDM virtual topology was within 1.4dB

Distributed abstraction and verification of an installed optical fibre network.

The management of wavelength routed optical mesh networks is complex with many potential light path routes and numerous physical layer impairments to transmission performance. This complexity can be reduced by applying the ideas of abstraction from computer science where different equipment is described in the same basic terms. The noise-to-signal ratio can be used as a metric to describe the quality of transmission performance of a signal propagated through a network element and accumulates additively through a sequence of such elements allowing the estimation of end-to-end performance. This study aims to explore the robustness of the noise-to-signal ratio metric in an installed fibre infrastructure. We show that the abstracted noise-to-signal ratio is independent of the observers and their location. We confirm that the abstracted noise-to-signal ratio can reasonably predict the performance of light-paths subsequently set in our network. Having a robust network element abstraction that can be incorporated into routeing engines allows the network management controller to make decisions on the most effective way to use the network resources in terms of the routeing and data coding format

Dynamic Virtual Network Reconfiguration Over SDN Orchestrated Multitechnology Optical Transport Domains

Network virtualization is an emerging technique that enables multiple tenants to share an underlying physical infrastructure, isolating the traffic running over different virtual infrastructures/tenants. This technique aims to improve network utilization, while reducing the complexities in terms of network management for operators. Applied to this context, software defined networking (SDN) paradigm can ease network configurations by enabling network programmability and automation, which reduces the amount of operations required from both service and infrastructure providers. SDN techniques are decreasing vendor lock-in issues due to specific configuration methods or protocols. Application-based Network Operations (ABNO) is a toolbox of key network functional components with the goal of offering application-driven network management. Service provisioning using ABNO may involve direct configuration of data plane elements or delegate it to several control plane modules. We validate the applicability of ABNO to multi-tenant virtual networks in multi-technology optical domains based on two scenarios, in which multiple control plane instances are orchestrated by the architecture. Congestion Detection and Failure Recovery, are chosen to demonstrate fast recalculation and reconfiguration, while hiding the configurations in the physical layer from the upper layer.Grant numbers : supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the project FARO (TEC2012-38119)