First demonstration of all-optical programmable SDM/TDM intra data centre and WDM inter-DCN communication

We successfully demonstrate a flat-structured DCN powered by large-port-count fibre-switch-based OCS, PLZT-switch enabled TDM and MEFs supported SDM. The inter-DCN ToR-to-ToR direct optical connections are setup through metro/core networks using all-optical SDM/WDM converters

LIGHTNESS: a function-virtualizable software defined data center network with all-optical circuit/packet switching

©2016 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.Modern high-performance data centers are responsible for delivering a huge variety of cloud applications to the end-users, which are increasingly pushing the limits of the currently deployed computing and network infrastructure. All-optical dynamic data center network (DCN) architectures are strong candidates to overcome those adversities, especially when they are combined with an intelligent software defined control plane. In this paper, we report the first harmonious integration of an optical flexible hardware framework operated by an agile software and virtualization platform. The LIGHTNESS deeply programmable all-optical circuit and packet switched data plane is able to perform unicast/multicast switch-over on-demand, while the powerful software defined networking (SDN) control plane enables the virtualization of computing and network resources creating a virtual data center and virtual network functions (VNF) on top of the data plane. We experimentally demonstrate realistic intra DCN with deterministic latencies for both unicast and multicast, showcasing monitoring, and database migration scenarios each of which is enabled by an associated network function virtualization element. Results demonstrate a fully functional complete unification of an advanced optical data plane with an SDN control plane, promising more efficient management of the next-generation data center compute and network resources.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Characteristics of homogeneous multi-core fibers for SDM transmission

We describe optical data transmission systems using homogeneous, single-mode, multi-core fibers (MCFs). We first briefly discuss space-division multiplexing (SDM) fibers, observing that no individual SDM fiber offers overwhelming advantages over bundles of single-mode fiber (SMF) across all transmission regimes. We note that for early adoption of SDM fibers, uncoupled or weakly coupled fibers which are compatible with existing SDM infrastructure have a practical advantage. Yet, to be more attractive than parallel SMF, it is also necessary to demonstrate benefits beyond improved spatial spectral efficiency. It is hoped that the lower spread of propagation delays (skew) between spatial channels in some fibers can be exploited for improved performance and greater efficiency from hardware sharing and joint processing. However, whether these benefits can be practically harnessed and outweigh impairments or effort to mitigate cross talk between spatial channels is not yet clear. Hence, focusing on homogeneous MCFs, we first describe measurements and simulations on the impact of inter-core cross talk in such fibers before reporting experimental investigation into the spatial channel skew variation with a series of the experimental results including a comparison with SMF in varying environmental conditions. Finally, we present some system and transmission experiments using parallel recirculating loops that enable demonstration of both multi-dimensional modulation and joint digital processing techniques across three MCF cores. Both techniques lead to increased transmission reach but highlight the need for further experimental analysis to properly characterize the potential benefits of correlated propagation delays in such fibers