Key technologies for energy and spectral efficient flexible optical networks

Several spectral efficient solutions for next-generation flexible optical networks are under investigation in order to cope with scalability issues while traffic demand is continuously increasing. Concerning transmission, Nyquist wavelength-division multiplexing (NWDM)—that confines the bandwidth within the Nyquist frequency of the signal—recently gained a momentum as one of the most suitable solutions for transmission over backbone networks and commercial solutions are available by now. Besides NWDM, other transmission techniques have been proposed to approach or overcome the Nyquist limit, thus further increasing the spectral efficiency (SE). Among them, time–frequency packing (TFP) is one candidate. This method builds a superchannel, whose subcarriers significantly overlap in frequency or time or both. This leads to an increased SE at the expenses of additional complexity within the transceiver to compensate for the introduced intersymbol interference. In this paper, we experimentally compare, for the first time, NWDM and TFP when employing the same identical test-bed. The experiment considered the two different terabit superchannels: a polarization multiplexed (PM)-16 quadrature amplitude modulation for the case of NWDM case, and a PM-quadrature phase-shift keying for TFP. The comparison and assessment of the results is carried out first in back-to-back configuration and, afterward, by propagating them over a recirculating loop consisting of a standard single-mode fiber, including spectrum selective switch to emulate node filtering.

The increasing data traffic and shrinking profit margins force network operators to look for intelligent methods of increasing the effective capacity of transmission systems. By employing advanced multicarrier transmission techniques, such as Nyquist wavelength division multiplexing, coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing or time-frequency packing, which utilise closely spaced multiple channels, an increase in spectral efficiency and a terabit scale transmission has been achieved. However, network volumes have not only increased in size, but also become more dynamic. Conventional networks, based on static pre-provisioned links, would struggle to withstand the huge variation in demand of such dynamic networks. An improved solution would entail creating systems that are responsive and flexible and whose capacity can be dynamically directed when and where it is needed. The paradigm of such programmable or software defined networking (SDN) has been widely investigated and deployed in recent years, not only in the data centre [1], but also in LAN and WAN networks [2], [3]. However, to fully realise the promise of improved efficiency and service provisioning time, the programmability cannot be confined to the control and data planes of the telecommunication system. A truly flexible and responsive network requires a dynamic, software controlled physical layer that uses the available resources and infrastructure in the most effective way. The marriage between the programmability of software defined optical networking (SDON) [4] and resource allocation flexibility, brought by elastic optical networks (EON) [5], promises to deliver an optical infrastructure that will be truly future-proof.

In this paper, we have proposed a generalized large-scale optical cross-connect (OXC) architecture utilizing waveband selective switches (WBSS) for realizing future cost-effective, bandwidth-abundant and flexible optical networks. The developed architecture implements multiple WBSSs for each incoming fiber and small size wavelength selective switches (WSSs) for dropping optical paths while simply deploying 1´2 WSSs or 1´2 optical couplers for realizing the adding function. Thanks to the use of WBSSs, which are more cost-effective and simpler devices, the developed architecture enables a significant hardware scale reduction. The WBSS-based OXC, however, suffers from a limited routing capability, which relies on the inner node parameter (i.e., the WBSS number per input fiber) and the waveband granularity of WBSSs. We, therefore, evaluate the hardware scale requirement of our developed architecture in comparison with that of conventional WSS-based OXC. It is verified that a substantial hardware scale reduction can be achieved by using the proposed architecture, especially for high port count OXCs or when applying coarser granular WBSSs. Moreover, we also assess the performance of dynamic optical networks based on the proposed OXC. Numerical simulations show that the network offers a substantial necessary hardware scale reduction at the cost of a small performance offset comparing to that of the network using conventional WSS-based OXC.

Content caching is an effective technique that reduces network power consumption by reducing the path between users and requested video content. This paper examines the benefit of caching in an IP over WDM core network with respect to current and future networks. It compares the power savings due to caching in current implementations of optical networks to potential power savings when future optical network features are realized. Future optical core networks are considered with three major power efficiency improvements over current networks. First, network devices are equipped with sleep-mode capabilities where inactive parts of storage devices are put in low-power mode. Second, optical bypass is employed where intermediate IP routers are not engaged in traffic routing. Third, the power consumption of router ports is significantly reduced, consequently reducing the power consumption of transport. The results show that content caching is effective in reducing power consumption under both current and future optical networks, making caching a successful option for video delivery in the future Internet.

Spectrum engineering in flexible grid data center optical networks

We compare by simulation the performance of two techniques for generating polarization-multiplexed quadrature phase-shift keying with a high spectral efficiency (SE). The first is based on coherent optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CO-OFDM). The second, which we call Nyquist wavelength-division multiplexing (N-WDM), is based on the use of optical pulses having an “almost” rectangular spectrum, with bandwidth ideally equal to the Baud-rate. We show that the two techniques have the same sensitivity and SE under idealized assumptions. However, we found that CO-OFDM requires a much larger receiver bandwidth and proportionally faster speed of the analog-to-digital converters. We also tested CO-OFDM and N-WDM over long-haul nonlinear links and found N-WDM to outperform CO-OFDM in this case, too.

The traffic carried by core optical networks grows at a steady but remarkable pace of 30-40% year-over-year. Optical transmissions and networking advancements continue to satisfy the traffic requirements by delivering the content over the network infrastructure in a cost and energy efficient manner. Such core optical networks serve the information traffic demands in a dynamic way, in response to requirements for shifting of traffics demands, both temporally (day/night) and spatially (business district/residential). However as we are approaching fundamental spectral efficiency limits of singlemode fibers, the scientific community is pursuing recently the development of an innovative, all-optical network architecture introducing the spatial degree of freedom when designing/operating future transport networks. Spacedivision- multiplexing through the use of bundled single mode fibers, and/or multi-core fibers and/or few-mode fibers can offer up to 100-fold capacity increase in future optical networks. The EU INSPACE project is working on the development of a complete spatial-spectral flexible optical networking solution, offering the network ultra-high capacity, flexibility and energy efficiency required to meet the challenges of delivering exponentially growing traffic demands in the internet over the next twenty years. In this paper we will present the motivation and main research activities of the INSPACE consortium towards the realization of the overall project solution.

We report on Nyquist wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) communication in the terahertz (THz)-band utilizing an integrated-optic spectrum synthesizer. The synthesizer is composed of two arrayed-waveguide gratings, and an array of phase shifters and variable optical attenuators, and it can individually control amplitude and phases of up to 64 optical discrete frequency components with 40 GHz spacing. Three optical frequency combs are produced by combining the synthesizer with a mode-locked laser diode. The produced combs are used to generate a THz-wave Nyquist WDM signal with photo-mixing. We demonstrate 2 x 40 Gbit/s Nyquist WDM communication in the 300 GHz band.

Space-division multiplexing allows unprecedented scaling of bandwidth density for optical communication. Routing spatial channels among transmission ports is critical for future scalable optical network, however, there is still no characteristic parameter to label the overlapped optical carriers. Here we propose a free-space optical flow routing (OFR) scheme by using optical orbital angular moment (OAM) states to label optical flows and simultaneously steer each flow according to their OAM states. With an OAM multiplexer and a reconfigurable OAM demultiplexer, massive individual optical flows can be routed to the demanded optical ports. In the routing process, the OAM beams act as data carriers at the same time their topological charges act as each carrier's labels. Using this scheme, we experimentally demonstrate switching, multicasting and filtering network functions by simultaneously steer 10 input optical flows on demand to 10 output ports. The demonstration of data-carrying OFR with nonreturn-to-zero signals shows that this process enables synchronous processing of massive spatial channels and flexible optical network.

Compared to traditional wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based flexible optical networks provide better spectral efficiency due to their flexible bandwidth allocation capability and fine granularity. Survivability is a crucial issue in OFDM-based flexible optical networks. Recently we proposed a new survivable multi-path provisioning scheme (MPP) that efficiently supports demands with flexible protection requirement in OFDM-based optical networks and studied the static survivable multipath routing and spectrum allocation (SM-RSA) problem, which aims to accommodate a given set of demands with minimum utilized spectrum. We have showed that the MPP scheme achieves higher spectral efficiency than the traditional single-path provisioning (SPP) scheme. In this paper, we study the dynamic SM-RSA problem, which selects multiple routes and allocates spectrum on these routes for a given demand as it arrives at the network. We develop an integer linear programming (ILP) model as well as a heuristic algorithm for the dynamic SM-RSA problem. We conduct simulations to study the advantage of MPP over SPP for the dynamic traffic scenario in terms of blocking performance and fairness. We also compare the performance of the MPP heuristic algorithm and the ILP model.

Mobile network operators are facing ever-increasing traffic demands because of the numerous data-hungry applications used by subscribers nowadays. As a result, technologies that support high bandwidth and network availability have become essential. One such technology is dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). This study investigated the evolution of an optical add/drop multiplexer (OADM), which is one of the key components of DWDM technology. The goal of this research was to investigate how the evolution of an OADM has contributed to network survivability and bandwidth enhancement in DWDM optical networks. A thorough search of the literature on an OADM was undertaken using data sources like Google Scholar, Elsevier, ResearchGate, ScienceDirect, Springer, and DWDM vendor manuals. The study found that in order to address present and future DWDM optical network demands, a reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) deployed over flexgrid spectrum is essential. The most advanced iteration of a ROADM supports colorless, directionless, contentionless, and flex-grid functionalities, resulting in the most robust, flexible, and future-proof DWDM optical network. The study further found that flex-grid technology supports uplinks with high line rates and has superior spectral efficiency.

We are witnessing the evolution of optical networks toward highly heterogeneous, flexible networks with a widening area of application. As the bandwidth and reliability performance requirements of mission-critical applications tighten, and the amount of carried data grows, issues related to optical network security are becoming increasingly important. Optical networks are vulnerable to several types of attacks at the physical layer, typically aimed at disrupting the service or gaining unauthorized access to carried data. Such security breaches can induce financial losses to clients or loss of privacy, or cause network-wide service disruption, possibly leading to huge data and revenue losses. Awareness of system weaknesses and possible attack methods is a prerequisite for designing effective network security solutions. As optical networks evolve, new and changing vulnerabilities must be identified and dealt with efficiently. To this end, this article provides a comprehensive overview of potential physical-layer attack scenarios in current and future optical networks. It then proposes a general security framework, outlining possible strategies for dealing with such attacks, meant to aid in the development of efficient provisioning, monitoring, protection, and restoration schemes in the context of optical-layer security.

Elastic optical network (EON) is a promising candidate for the next generation optical transport network because of its high spectrum efficiency and flexible spectrum allocation. However, to migrate from today’s dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) network to EON, optical nodes such as reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) should be replaced with the ones with expensive flexi-grid wavelength selective switches (WSSs). Thus, whether and how today’s optical network will be evolved to EON is still under debate. Meanwhile, with the technical maturity of optical super-channels that transmit bit rates at the level of 1 Tb/s, super-channels are expected to dominate the future optical transport network because of their attractiveness of high spectrum efficiency and superior cost effectiveness. In this paper, we propose a new quasi-coarse wavelength division multiplexing (Quasi-CWDM) optical network architecture that is compatible to today’s WDM network in spectrum operation, while still maintaining the flexibility of adaptation between the bit rate and the transparent reach of an optical super-channel, but not requiring expensive flexi-grid WSSs. Specifically, the Quasi-CWDM optical network employs large fixed frequency grids, whose spacing falls between the traditional CWDM and DWDM, e.g., 200 GHz or 400 GHz. To maintain the flexibility between the bit rate and the transparent reach of an optical super-channel, different modulation formats are chosen according to channel physical distances. To minimize network hardware cost and maximize carried user traffic demand, we develop a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model and a heuristic algorithm that can efficiently groom upper-layer IP traffic onto the optical layer by optical super-channels. We compare the design based on the Quasi-CWDM network to those based on the DWDM network and the advanced EON. It is found that the proposed Quasi-CWDM network has a much lower hardware cost than the other two types of networks, while achieving spectrum efficiency close to EON.

A novel and high-performance passive optical network (PON), the SUCCESS-DWA PON, employs dynamic wavelength allocation to provide bandwidth sharing across multiple physical PONs. In the downstream, tunable lasers, an arrayed waveguide grating, and coarse/fine filtering combine to create a flexible new optical access solution. In the upstream, several distributed and centralized schemes are proposed and investigated. The network performance is compared to conventional TDM-PONs under different traffic models, including the self-similar traffic model and the transaction-oriented model. Broadcast support and deployment issues are addressed. The network's excellent scalability can bridge the gap between conventional TDM-PONs and WDM-PONs. The powerful architecture is a promising candidate for next generation optical access networks.

From an algorithmic perspective, planning and operating optical networks falls in the broad category of network optimization problems. We give a short introduction on algorithmic techniques that can be used to solve network optimization problems, emphasizing on linear optimization and heuristics. We present examples of applying these techniques to optimize resource allocation during the planning of optical networks. In particular, we focus on fixed-grid WDM networks, which is the current practice, and on flexible optical networks, considered as the most promising architecture for meeting next generation core and metro network requirements. In doing so, we describe a generic problem definition that can capture both types of networks in a unified manner.