SDN East–West cooperation in a converged fixed-mobile optical access network: enabling 5G slicing capabilities

Abstract

The new 5G service requirements will force operators to rethink the deployment of infrastructure and management tools. The reuse of passive optical network (PON) technology to connect antenna sites has attracted the attention of some operators, as the high availability of some 5G services, as well as ubiquitous radio coverage in a denser network, could be ensured with minimum deployment efforts. In this case, the implications of each 5G slice instance deserve to be clarified in a PON infrastructure, and a fixed-mobile converged management system in optical access networks (ANs) will be necessary for operators. Some class of service (CoS) algorithms must be developed to ensure that different and heterogeneous services are properly transported through optical fibers in a fixed-mobile converged scenario. Many organizations are considering the use of transmission containers (T-CONTs) (the indicator of the bandwidth distribution in the PON uplink) for PON slicing, but the CoS for mobile traffic in a PON has not yet been defined. In parallel, the new AN management solutions are mostly focused on software-defined network (SDN) northbound/southbound interfaces between orchestrators and abstraction entities. However, if an end-to-end 5G slice instance must be dynamically applied in a fixed-mobile converged architecture, the coordination between mobile and residential management systems is necessary. We propose a disaggregated optical line terminal (OLT) with an SDN controller that leverages the advantages of virtualization technologies and the currently deployed OLT. We propose an East–West interface between fixed and mobile SDN controllers and have successfully implemented a 5G slicing proof of concept in access transport networks using this interface. We succeeded in reducing uplink latency and jitter by 25%–50% thanks to a smart optimization of T-CONTs, which could be interesting for ultrareliable and low-latency communications applications. A discussion of T-CONTs for slicing is also given based on experimental measurements.

Energy Conservation in Passive Optical Networks: A Tutorial and Survey

“…This has motivated both standardization bodies (e.g., G Suppl. 74 [160]) and researchers from academia to further investigate in the area of PON slicing (e.g., [161]- [163]).…”

“…In [165], the authors have shown that an SDN-based energy saving mechanism is feasible and effective in converged optical-wireless network. Similarly, for such integrated network, Wang et al [163] have demonstrated how the coordination between controllers in different network segments (e.g., 5G core associated controllers) leverages dynamic reconfiguration e nabling 5 G s licing efficiently. Integrating SDN in PON also results in improving energy conservation in a PON.…”

“…PON virtualization allows multiple operators, services, and applications to share the common network resources, thereby maximizing resource utilization of the network [162]. In particular, with the advent of 5G and beyond-5G, there has been an increasing interest in designing an SDN assisted PON slicing (e.g., [163], [236]- [238]). In 2021, ITU-T released ITU-T G-Sup.74 [160] stating functional expectation of a PON system to facilitate PON slicing and related functionalities for the control of slicing-OLT, ONU and communication resource (bandwidth) are sliced.…”

Design security architecture for unmanned aerial vehicles by 5G cloud network based implementation of SDN with NFV and AI

“…According to a discussions raised, networks softwarization provides number of supports to the UAV network like NS authorizes system developers without making the entire network shutdown to regulate the NFs of UAV with policies via a centralized programming controls, NS is logically centralize of UAV networks intelligence within programmable NFs, NS increment of end user quality of services with quality of experiences [22], NS preserves for the UAV specific dynamic path information like to accomplish the mission timely from source to destination, and last NS allows flexible and cost efficient solutions (NFV without implement of any additional device) of UAV that is useful to mission criticals application [23]. The benefits of the UAV mentioned in the above paragraphs help for increase the acceptability with number of organizations in the world.…”