Lecture: 9 Elastic Optical Networks

Ajmal Muhammad, Robert Forchheimer

Information Coding Group
ISY Department

Outline

Motivation
Elastic Optical Networking

Flexible spectrum grid, tunable transceiver, flexible OXC

Flexible Optical Nodes

Routing and Spectrum Assignment Problem

Research Motivation
Emerging applications with a range of transport requirement
Future applications with unknown requirements
Flexible and efficient optical networks to support existing, emerging and
future applications

Courtesy: High performance net

lab., Bristol

Applications with Diverse Requirements

Media

High-speed data
400G, 1Tb/s

Courtesy: High performance network

lab., Bristol

Evolution of Transmission Capacity

Spectral Efficiency (SE) Improvement

Fixed optical amplifier bandwidth (~ 5 THz)

Per fiber capacity increase has been accomplished through boosting SE (bit
rate, wavelength, symbol per bit, state of polarization)

TDM
WDM

BPSK
QPSK

0.1

Multi-level mod.

PDM

Multiplexing technology evolution

0.01
0

10

DP-QPSK
DP-16QAM
DP-64QAM

0.1

DP-256QAM
@25 Gbaud

Spectral efficiency (b/s/Hz)

Optical amplifier bandwidth (~ 5 THz)

Relative optical reach with

constant energy per bit

Bit loading higher than that for DP-QPSK causes rapid increase in
SNR penalty, and results in shorter optical reach
SE improvement is slowing down, meaning higher rate data need
more spectrum

DP-1024QAM

0.01
100 200 300 400 500600
Bit rate per channel (Gb/s)

Current Optical Networks :: Inflexible

Super-wavelength

Courtesy: High performance networ

lab., Bristol

Current Solution for Bandwidth-Intensive

Applications
Optical virtual concatenation (OVC) for high capacity end-to-end connection (superwavelength)
Demultiplex the demand to smaller ones such as 100 or 40 Gb/s, which can still fit in
the fixed grid (Inverse multiplexing)
Several wavelengths are grouped and allocated end-to-end according to the
application bandwidth requirements
Grouping occurs at the client layer without really affecting the network
Connection over several wavelengths is not switched as a single entity in network
nodes

Elastic Optical Networking

The term elastic refers to three key properties:
The optical spectrum can be divided up flexibly

Courtesy: Ori Gerstel, IEEE Comm. Mag. 201

Elastic Transceivers
The transceivers can generate elastic optical paths (EOPs); that is
path with variable bit rates

Tunable transceiver

Courtesy: Steven Gringeri, IEEE Comm. Ma

Flexible Switching
The optical nodes (cross-connect) need
to support a wide range of switching
(i.e., varying from sub-wavelength to
super-wavelength)

EONs

WDM Networks

Bandwidth Variable

Drivers for Developing the EONs

Support for 400 Gb/s, 1Tb/s and other high bit rate demands
Disparate bandwidth needs: properly size the spectrum for each
demand based on its bit rate & the transmission distance
Tighter channel spacing: freeing up spectrum for other demands
Reach vs. spectral efficiency trade-off: bandwidth variable transmitter
can adjust to a modulation format occupying less optical spectrum for
short EOP and still perform error-free due to the reduced impairments
Dynamic networking: the optical layer can now response directly to
variable bandwidth demands from the client layers

Elastic Optical Path Network:: Example

Path length
Bit rate
Conventional
design

1,000 km 1,000 km 1,000 km 250 km

400 Gb/s 200 Gb/s 100 Gb/s

Fixed
format, grid
QPSK

Elastic
optical path
network

Adaptive
modulation
Elastic channel
spacing

QPSK
200 Gb/s

QPSK

250 km

400 Gb/s 100 Gb/s

16QAM

16QAM

Outline

Motivation
Elastic Optical Networking

Flexible spectrum grid, tunable transceiver, flexible OXC

Flexible Optical Nodes

Routing and Spectrum Assignment Problem

Common Building Blocks for

Flexible OXCs

Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop

Multiplexer (ROADM)

Optical splitter

Add channels

Wavelength
selective switch

Drop channels

Multi-Granular Optical Switching

FXC: Fiber switch

BTF: Band to Fiber

BXC: Waveband switch

WXC: Wavelength switch

Add channels

Drop channels

Architecture on Demand (AoD)

MEMS switch is used to interconnected all the
Input-output ports and switching devices

Optical backplane cross-connections for AoD OXCs

Courtesy: High performance netw

lab., Bristol

AoD Node
Aimed to develop an optical node that can adapt its architecture
according to the traffic profile and support elastic allocation of resources

Flexible OXC Configuration

Backplane implemented with 96x96 3D-MEMS
Flexibility to implement and test several switch architectures on-the-fly
Switching time 20ms

Courtesy: High performance ne

lab., Bristol

Outline

Motivation
Elastic Optical Networking

Flexible spectrum grid, tunable transceiver, flexible OXC

Flexible Optical Nodes

Routing and Spectrum Assignment Problem

Routing and Spectrum Assignment (RSA)

Spectrum variable (non-constant)
connections, in contrast to standard
WDM

Planning Elastic/Flexgrid Networks

Input: Network topology, traffic matrix, physical layer models
Output: Routes and spectrum allocation RSA
(RMLSA include also the modulation-level used 2 flexibility degree:
modulation and spectrum)

Minimize utilized spectrum and/or number of transponders, and/or

Satisfy physical layer constraints

0 1 2 1 0 1
1 0 1 1 0 1

0 1 0 1 1 1

1 0 1 0 2 0
2 1 0 1 0 1

0 2 1 1 1 0

23

Examples

RMLSA

RSA

Courtesy: Ori Gerstel,

IEEE Comm. Mag. 2012

Cost-Efficient Elastic Networks

Planning Using AoD Nodes

Conventional ROADMs

AoD ROADMs