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Future Optical Networks for Innovation, Research and Experimentation

Project description

Satisfying the needs of future networking systems

The emergence of beyond 5G and 6G technologies has highlighted the growing demand for networks and systems that offer improved availability, adaptability, increased capacity, lower latency, and reduced maintenance requirements. To effectively meet these demands, it is essential to develop innovative solutions that are cost-effective in addressing network traffic growth. The EU-funded ONFIRE project aims to address this by developing and introducing several crucial software and hardware technologies necessary for future networking advancements. The project will primarily focus on two European industrial PhDs and run a 3-year research programme, thereby creating highly skilled experts who are much needed in this field.

Objective

Future (5G) services will impose stringent requirements in the design and operation of transport networks: increased capacity, low latency, high availability and dynamicity, reduced service provisioning with lower OpEx, while considering end-to-end service objectives (QoS and QoT).
To cope with traffic growth in a cost-effective way, an appealing strategy focuses on deploying elastic and programmable commodity optical hardware via disaggregation (white boxes) combined with transmission technologies.
To address both end-to-end service objectives and traffic dynamicity, an interesting approach leverages the benefits provided by SDN/NFV control and the automated decisions and re-configuration opportunities enabled by cognitive algorithms. For this, SDN/NFV provides unified control on top of systems’/devices’ programmability, regardless of the data infrastructure (packet, optical, IT), while exploiting the large real-time monitored information dynamically to adopt actions leading to attain service end-to-end objectives and more optimal network operation and resource utilization.
Those hardware and software solutions constitute ONFIRE R&D goals which basically target the design, deployment and experimental evaluation of disaggregated optical transport hardware automatically articulated by novel cognitive algorithms supported by a SDN/NFV architecture. To do so, ONFIRE proposes a three-year research programme centred on two European industrial PhDs. PhD candidates will benefit from an intensive training process combining the strengths of both: i) CTTC as research institution to acquire research tools and methodology, with UPC as associated partner offering its PhD programme; ii) ALUD as a vendor delivering a highly valuable view of research activities and its impact on industrial ecosystem. Targeted PhD training programme is devised to maximize the synergy between the collaborators and promote career opportunities of ONFIRE researchers in the European ICT Research Area.

Coordinator

CENTRE TECNOLOGIC DE TELECOMUNICACIONS DE CATALUNYA
Net EU contribution
€ 495 745,92
Address
AVINGUDA CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS 7 PARC MEDITERRANI DE TECNOLOGIA
08860 Castelldefels Barcelona
Spain

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Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 495 745,92

Participants (1)

Partners (1)