ONFIRE — Future Optical Networks for Innovation, Research and Experimentation

Results in brief

Future Optical Networks for Innovation, Research and Experimentation

Efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the future transport networks will play a key role in enabling the digital equality. Prices for ICT equipment and connection time are required to decrease. Otherwise, cost will remain a significant barrier to attain the aforementioned equality, since digital exclusion affects some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society. The ONFIRE project addresses these challenge via two research themes to take advantage of flexibility and modularity in the hardware and software domains: i) disaggregation in optical networks; and ii) cognition in optical networks. This combination leads to reduce in capital expenditure (CAPEX) through the use of cost-effective optical systems for optical disaggregated networks with white boxes, and well as lowering operational expenditures (OPEX) through the network optimization brought by Artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms. The specific technological-oriented objectives of the ONFIRE project are: Objective I: Leverage on the flexibility and modularity that have been fostered by means of software techniques, exploiting software-defined networking (SDN) concepts, aiming at deploying an AI-enabled control scheme across heterogeneous optical transport networks. Objective II: Leverage on the flexibility from elastic interfaces and programmable white boxes, transforming the operation of today’s networks infrastructure and reducing over-provisioning and margins, in order to increase overall network equipment utilization. Objective III: Develop cost-effective subsystems for non-intrusive in-band monitoring of advanced modulation formats to guarantee both quality of transmission (QoT) and quality of service, QoS (on a per flow basis) for end-to-end services. Objective IV: Use data mining techniques to leverage massive monitoring data from the physical layer, provided by advanced mechanisms in coherent interfaces, white boxes and monitoring subsystems, to continuously adjust and re-optimize network settings supported by SDN control allowing full network programmability with accurate performance prediction. All objectives have been successfully achieved.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project 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.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

CENTRE TECNOLOGIC DE TELECOMUNICACIONS DE CATALUNYA · Castelldefels BarcelonaCoordinatorSpain
NOKIA SOLUTIONS AND NETWORKS GMBH AND CO KG · MUNCHENGermany
UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE CATALUNYA · BARCELONASpain

ONFIRE · Future Optical Networks for Innovation, Research and Experimentation

Results in brief

Future Optical Networks for Innovation, Research and Experimentation

Project objective

Participants

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