A control plane framework for future cognitive heterogeneous optical networks

Abstract

Future optical networks are expected to provide an efficient infrastructure able to deliver a growing number of services, which have to meet various requirements in terms of quality of service. To achieve this objective the physical network is going through an evolution aimed at increasing its flexibility in terms of spectrum utilization and its level of heterogeneity in terms of supported services and technologies. In this context, cognitive optical networks represent a viable solution to fill the gap between the intelligence required by the future networks and the current optical technology. This paper proposes a control plane framework developed to coordinate the interactions among the elements of the future cognitive optical networks. The building blocks of the framework and the involved protocols are presented. Moreover, this paper provides an insight of the control plane issues related to the introduction of the flexible optical technology.

Extending impairment-aware control plane solutions toward cognitive optical networks

“…Finally, the interaction of the CDS with the controlled nodes and the coordination of the network elements are carried out by a novel Control Plane framework. More details about the needed enhancement to the CP can be found in [10].…”

Proactive restoration of slow-failures in optical networks

“…The CDS receives traffic demands, and determines how to handle them (e.g. by performing Routing and Wavelength Assignment, RWA) by taking into account both the current status of the network and its history, and instructs the control plane to configure network elements accordingly [5]. Compared to a canonical (stateless) PCE, the CDS knows the state of occupation of each wavelength in each fiber, receives some form of acknowledgement at the end of the LP setup (thus keeping track of LP history through a dedicated knowledge base), and keeps a history of the information received about the quality of transmission collected by the control plane, measured in terms of raw BER at the input of the FEC decoder of each LP.…”

Toward a control and management system enabling cognitive optical networks

“…Given this foreword, the centralized approach seems to be the most appropriate one to create a cognitive optical infrastructure. In this framework (described previously in [9], and reported here), the CDS is the unique brain of the network, supported by the Control & Management System (CMS). The CMS encompasses the operations of the Control Plane (CP) and the Management Plane (MP), and thus covers the fundamental task of managing the interactions of the Cognitive Decision System (CDS) with all the other network elements (see Fig.…”

“…Nevertheless, the CMS consists of additional modules located in the control node: i) the Topology Server (M2) and the NMS Server (M3). Here follows a partial description of the activity of the modules, for more details please refer to [9].…”