Final Report Summary - ABACUS (Advanced Integration of SDN and SDO for Future-Proof Networks)
Overview of the ABACUS project
In the area of optical communications and networks, major research and development efforts are focused towards extending the flexibility and efficiency of optical networks; the main driver is to better adapt to new emerging bandwidth demanding services while catering the needs of end-users, while reducing the overall cost and complexity of the network. The goal of this project is to provide interdisciplinary training at the highest level in the area of optical communications and the novel areas of Software Defined Optics (SDO) and OpenFlow Software Defined Networking (SDN). In particular the training will contain the required new skills required to define novel, resilient, energy-efficient optical networks architectures achieving efficient flexible, re-configurable, and dynamically-adaptive systems.
"At the end of this project, new concepts will be proposed and validated to achieve ultra high data rates (beyond 100 Gbps per wavelength), enhanced resource utilization and flexible bandwidth allocation at sub-wavelength granularities using SDO."
As reported in Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. 36, No. 10, 2018, p. 1807-1814 a system experimented working at 112 Gbps was achieved used primarily low cost components and at OFC2017 (Optical Fiber Communication Conference 2017. Optical Society of America (OSA), 2017) a system experiment at 200 Gbps was reported.
For the use in large scale datacenters it was theoretically simulated and experimentally validated how an applied SDO/SDN control platform can subdived the capacity of a wavelength in order to match the dynamic demand within a datacenter network.
"New network management and networking solutions to flexibly control such network will be demonstrated using SDN."
On this activity a new solution for next generation optical access networks was intensively researched and a full concept was submitted for the ITU SG-15 as proposal for a new standard.
The three early stage researchers joined this European Industrial Doctorate program and are being trained in a field of high importance within the roadmap of photonics development at industry level and vital importance for the strategic technology growth in Europe.
Scientific developments
ESR1 Christoph Wagner has worked on two adjacent research topics within the area of high capacity optical access networks: spectrum slicing techniques for high capacity transponders and WDM-PON systems using tunable lasers. In the area of spectrum slicing techniques, he has demonstrated experimentally the concept. In the area of WDM-PON, he had work at simulation level and is now establishing an experimental setup.
The work on Tunable Lasers Sources in PON scenarios under a WDM paradigm is paving the way for future access systems requiring not only raw capacity but also reconfigurability and flexibility; these two do not refer only to technical performance, but also to provide systems that are energy friendly and can adapt to the needs of the user - sometimes just technical specs do not actually maximize the user experience.
ESR2 Nicklas Eiselt work has focus on digital signal processing (DSP) and system demonstration on advanced modulation formats for 100/400G optical links. Nicklas has developed DSP equalizers to extend the reach of links using PAM-4 systems.
Driven by bandwidth-hungry applications, such as cloud applications, Internet of Things and social online networks, data center traffic increases dramatically and with such, the need for high-speed interconnections. For intra-data center connections, research efforts are focused on intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) based short-reach fiber links (from 500 m, 2 km to 10 km) supporting 400G with 8 channels of 50-Gb/s or 4 channels of 100-Gb/data rates. PAM-4 and DMT are the dominant modulation formats considered for this application. Recently, the IEEE P802.3bs 400 GbE Task Force has adopted PAM-4 as an industrial standard.
Inter-data center interconnects, however, more and more tend to cover geographic areas up to 100 km, which are well beyond the client optical interface standard. Optically amplified dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems in the 1550 nm transmission window are usually deployed for such applications, representing an efficient way to transport terabits of data.
ESR3 Bogdan Andrus work has focus on performance comparison of different network topologies under software defined networking management, including torus and hypercubes, and benchmarking them against traditional management approaches.
The goal of this PhD project is to study, propose and implement novel network management tools and enable up-to-date applications based on OpenFlow/NETCONF and exploiting Software Defined Optics (SDO) on the physical layer.
Full details of the work of the 3 ESR can be found in the 3 publicly available PhD dissertations. (@ www.dtu.dk)
In the area of optical communications and networks, major research and development efforts are focused towards extending the flexibility and efficiency of optical networks; the main driver is to better adapt to new emerging bandwidth demanding services while catering the needs of end-users, while reducing the overall cost and complexity of the network. The goal of this project is to provide interdisciplinary training at the highest level in the area of optical communications and the novel areas of Software Defined Optics (SDO) and OpenFlow Software Defined Networking (SDN). In particular the training will contain the required new skills required to define novel, resilient, energy-efficient optical networks architectures achieving efficient flexible, re-configurable, and dynamically-adaptive systems.
"At the end of this project, new concepts will be proposed and validated to achieve ultra high data rates (beyond 100 Gbps per wavelength), enhanced resource utilization and flexible bandwidth allocation at sub-wavelength granularities using SDO."
As reported in Journal of Lightwave Technology, Vol. 36, No. 10, 2018, p. 1807-1814 a system experimented working at 112 Gbps was achieved used primarily low cost components and at OFC2017 (Optical Fiber Communication Conference 2017. Optical Society of America (OSA), 2017) a system experiment at 200 Gbps was reported.
For the use in large scale datacenters it was theoretically simulated and experimentally validated how an applied SDO/SDN control platform can subdived the capacity of a wavelength in order to match the dynamic demand within a datacenter network.
"New network management and networking solutions to flexibly control such network will be demonstrated using SDN."
On this activity a new solution for next generation optical access networks was intensively researched and a full concept was submitted for the ITU SG-15 as proposal for a new standard.
The three early stage researchers joined this European Industrial Doctorate program and are being trained in a field of high importance within the roadmap of photonics development at industry level and vital importance for the strategic technology growth in Europe.
Scientific developments
ESR1 Christoph Wagner has worked on two adjacent research topics within the area of high capacity optical access networks: spectrum slicing techniques for high capacity transponders and WDM-PON systems using tunable lasers. In the area of spectrum slicing techniques, he has demonstrated experimentally the concept. In the area of WDM-PON, he had work at simulation level and is now establishing an experimental setup.
The work on Tunable Lasers Sources in PON scenarios under a WDM paradigm is paving the way for future access systems requiring not only raw capacity but also reconfigurability and flexibility; these two do not refer only to technical performance, but also to provide systems that are energy friendly and can adapt to the needs of the user - sometimes just technical specs do not actually maximize the user experience.
ESR2 Nicklas Eiselt work has focus on digital signal processing (DSP) and system demonstration on advanced modulation formats for 100/400G optical links. Nicklas has developed DSP equalizers to extend the reach of links using PAM-4 systems.
Driven by bandwidth-hungry applications, such as cloud applications, Internet of Things and social online networks, data center traffic increases dramatically and with such, the need for high-speed interconnections. For intra-data center connections, research efforts are focused on intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) based short-reach fiber links (from 500 m, 2 km to 10 km) supporting 400G with 8 channels of 50-Gb/s or 4 channels of 100-Gb/data rates. PAM-4 and DMT are the dominant modulation formats considered for this application. Recently, the IEEE P802.3bs 400 GbE Task Force has adopted PAM-4 as an industrial standard.
Inter-data center interconnects, however, more and more tend to cover geographic areas up to 100 km, which are well beyond the client optical interface standard. Optically amplified dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems in the 1550 nm transmission window are usually deployed for such applications, representing an efficient way to transport terabits of data.
ESR3 Bogdan Andrus work has focus on performance comparison of different network topologies under software defined networking management, including torus and hypercubes, and benchmarking them against traditional management approaches.
The goal of this PhD project is to study, propose and implement novel network management tools and enable up-to-date applications based on OpenFlow/NETCONF and exploiting Software Defined Optics (SDO) on the physical layer.
Full details of the work of the 3 ESR can be found in the 3 publicly available PhD dissertations. (@ www.dtu.dk)