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Networks and Optical Communications
Research Projects
The NOC group has a continuously increasing participation over the last years in European research projects, providing studies and innovative research work in the fields of optical networking and system design and testing.
Currently running research projects:
Transparent Ring Interconnection Using Multi-wavelength PHotonic switches.
FP6/STREP having as main objective to provide Transparent Ring Interconnection Using Multi-wavelength PHotonic switches and processing to significantly increase the network functionality and capacity
Lambda User Controlled Infrastructure for EU Research
FP6/IP having as main objective the development of advanced optical networks supporting Grid Applications for the enhancement of European Research
Dynamic Impairment Constrained Optical Networking
FP7/STREP having as main objective the development of a dynamic network planning tool that provides routing and resource allocation according to transmission impairments, modulation formats and link distances.
Transparent Ring Interconnection Using Multi-wavelength PHotonic switches.
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FP7/STREP having as main objective to study next-generation high capacity and extended access networks based on GPON and develop appropriate low-cost subsystems (Tx, Rx, remote amplification schemes, monitors and compensators) in support of high capacity, accessibility by large number of users and access extension to 100km
FP7/STREP is dealing with the development of special components and subsystems for advanced modulation formats (DPSK, DQPSK) at ultra high data rates (40, 100Gb/s), integrated in multi-wavelength arrayed structures and their performance evaluation in transmission test beds.
FP7/NoE is a collaborative project on optical transmission, switching and processing activities, including also joint laboratory efforts for the design and evaluation of subsystems.
FP7/NoE having as main objective to unite optical networks research efforts across Europe
Previous research projects:
Broadband e-Services and Access for the Home.
FP6/SSA having as main objective to stimulate and support the transfer of know-how and best practices in planning and delivering broadband services to the EU New Member States and Associated Candidate Countries
FP6/NoE having as main objective to unite optical networks research efforts across Europe
Towards Digital Optical Networks
The primary objective of this COST action is to focus on novel network concepts and architectures exploiting the features and properties of photonic technologies, to enable future telecommunications networks
Group members have also participated in the past in the following projects:
1. IST HARMONICS project (Hybrid Access Configurable Multi-wavelength Optical Networks for IP-based Communication Services).
2. Eurescom project P1116 SCORPION (Scalable Optical IP Transports Networks), focused on the signaling and routing of IP over optical networks.
3. Eurescom project P1012 FASHION (Flexible, Automatically Switched, Client Independent Optical Networks).
4. ACTS COBNET project (Corporate Optical Backbone Network). The results of this project lead to the EPFL presidential award.
5. European Research Project COST 240 “Modeling and Measuring Advanced Photonic Components for Telecommunications”. (1996-1999)
6. Race R2028 “Multi-wavelength Transport Network” (MWTN) consortium project, funded by the European Commission (EC).
7. European Research Project ACTS/MIDAS AC-053 “Μulti-gigabit Interconnection using Dispersion Compensation and Advanced Soliton Techniques”.
8. "Structure and Performance of a 34 Mbit/s Optical Link" that provided telephone services with simultaneous transmission of data channels.
9. LION (Layers Interworking Optical Networks) IST-1999-11387: Research on adapting and using existing network control protocols, for controlling ASON / ASTN networks. Study of Multi-layer Optical Network Resilience Schemes
10. ACTS project on the “Horizontal Action in Optical Networking” (HORIZON) funded by the European Commission
11. OPSnet (Optical Packet Switched network) project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in UK. Main research investigator for the constraction and demonstration of an asynchronous optical packet switch element able to operate at ulta-fast bit rates (>100Gb/s)
12. UPC (Ultrafast Photonics Collaboration) project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in UK. Development of an ultra-fast optical transport layer test bed based on the use of dynamically reconfigurable OXCs.
13. Race R2028 “Multi-wavelength Transport Network” (MWTN) consortium project, funded by the European Commission
14. Greek National research project in collaboration with the Greek Telecom Operator (ΟΤΕ): “ADSL technologies for providing fast Internet access”. (1998-2001)
15. European Research Project HCM (Ηuman Capital Mobility)/PICO-GIGA “Gigaherz and Picosecond Optical Systems in Semiconductor Laser Devices”.
16. European Research Project COST 267. (1999-2003)
17. Participation in several Corning Inc confidential projects related with optical communication systems and networks.
18. Participation in several Intracom Inc confidential projects related with optical networks.
19. Greek National project on the “Design and implementation of Coherent DPSK Optical Communication System”.
20. Design of diffractive optical elements for optical interconnections in computing and sensing systems.
21. Design and fabrication of a 2x1 Optical Switch/Amplifier for applications in advanced optical networks (project funded by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Swiss PTT.
22. Realization of semiconductor lasers for short optical pulse generation (project funded by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).
23. Composite Radio and Enhanced service Delivery for the Olympics (EU/IST/CREDO, 2001-) 4G wireless systems. Use of real network components and management info, intersystem handover.
24. Deployment and network level testing of a 9-node ring network in operation in the Athens metropolitan area featuring 16 λ’s and network protection using automatic, remotely configurable DWDM Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers.
25. Deployment and network level testing of a long- haul (+1500 Km) DWDM ring network designed for multi-lambda/multi-service operation up to 10Gb/s.
DICONET
As bandwidth demand increases, the technology behind current networks located at the core of the Internet will reach its intrinsic limitations. In particular, it is widely forecast that the speed of electronics will not keep up with ever-increasing line speeds in core, backbone networks. Transparent networks, where much of the electronic equipment is replaced by purely optical elements, are touted to replace the current generation of high-speed networks. However, despite much research effort, future-generation, transparent backbone networks have remained almost entirely in the research domain. In addition, replacing electronic elements by optical elements means that signals are no longer regenerated during transmission: impairments sustained during signals' propagation accumulate and limit the size of transparent networks.
The DICONET project tackles these challenges and aims at designing, building and testing a working prototype of the core network of the future. In particular, DICONET encompasses applied research in the following areas: design of high-reliability transparent networks with Quality of Service management capability, management of such networks through appropriate monitoring, routing and wavelength assignment to establish lightpaths (calls) between nodes (customers), an appropriate control plane, and various protection mechanisms to ensure continuous operation even in the event of a failure such as a fiber cut.
Expected results:
The DICONET project will provide a planning tool for transparent optical networks. The design tool will be tightly integrated to interact with the network management (control plane). The planning tool will be able to account for various information such as physical impairments monitoring to manage lightpaths and cope with failures for fast recovery. Novel algorithms for fast, impairment-aware lightpath computations and efficient impairment and failure monitoring will be developed. Information will be disseminated among the nodes by a novel control plane. All elements in the project will be designed, implemented and tested. The project will result in a working prototype of a transparent network and publications in international journals and conferences.
AIT's contribution:
AIT is the founding leader of the DICONET project and will provide substantial resources to the project - 59 person-months out of a total of 488.5 for the whole project. AIT is involved in all of the aspects of the DICONET project, and in particular in the following domains:
design and development of the network planning tool, study of
impairment-aware offline routing and wavelength assignment algorithms,
control plane protocols, testing of the prototype.
The following people are contributing to the DICONET project for AIT:
Prof. Ioannis Tomkos
Dr. Nikos Avlonitis
Dr. Dimitris Klonidis
Dr. Yvan Pointurier (contact person for AIT: yvan@ait.edu.gr)
Ms. Marianna Angelou
Mr. Siamak Azodolmolky
Ms. Katerina Margariti
Partners:
The DICONET project relies on close collaboration between 7 universities and research labs, 5 industrial partners and is managed by a consulting company. The close interaction between academic and industrial partners with different yet complementary experience will ensure the success of the project.
JCP-Consult
http://www.jcp-consult.com/
Research and Education Laboratory in Information Technologies (AIT)
http://www.ait.edu.gr/
Center of REsearch And Telecommunication Experimentations for
NETworked communities (CREATE-NET)
http://www.create-net.org/
Telecom ParisTech
http:/www.enst.fr/
Huawei Technologies Deutschland GmbH
http://www.huawei.com/
Interdisciplinair Instituut voor Breedband Technologie, VZW (IBBT)
http://www.ibbt.be/
Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (RACTI)
http://www.cti.gr/
University of Essex
http://www.essex.ac.uk/
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
http://www.upc.edu/
ADVA AG Optical Networking
http://www.advaoptical.com/
Deutsche Telekom AG
http://www.telekom.com
Alcatel-Lucent France
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/
ECI Telecom
http://www.ecitele.com/
SARDANA
SARDANA is a 7th FP STREP project that targets the performance enhancement of dense Fibre-to-the-Home networks, also called PONs (Passive Optical Networks). They constitute the fundamental segment with the required potential to match the huge capacity of transport networks with the new user communication demands, where deeper research is still to be performed. The key performances that this project aims at radically improving are the scalability and the robustness, since they constitute pillars of such a cost-sensitive segment:
Scalability is reached by means of cascadable remote nodes in a new hybrid architecture, allowing smoothest grow and migration, and the new adoption of remotely-pumped amplification, WDM/TDM overlay, and cascadable remote nodes in a new hybrid architecture, while keeping the passiveness of the PON and reducing civil work investments.
The resulting network is able to serve between 1000 and 4000 users with symmetric several hundred Mbit/s, spread along distances between 20 and 100 km, at 10Gbit/s.
Robustness is achieved by means of the development of new monitoring and electronic compensation strategies over the PON, as well as by the passive central-ring protection.
MAC section:
AIT is also involved in MAC layer issues of the SARDANA network.
The envisaged network is challenging in terms of the MAC protocol as well, due to its increased reach, capacity and the larger number of users supported.
The end goal is a MAC that provides fair allocation of bandwidth among users, respecting at the same time the QoS requirements of different services.
Novel dynamic bandwidth assignment mechanisms are going to be described, while at the same time it will be investigated how existing standards can migrate according to next generation access requirements from the MAC point of view.
APACHE
Optical metro and core networks, in this post-bubble period, have evolved from point-to-point high-capacity links to dynamically re-configurable networks driven by the traffic generated from new bandwidth-hungry applications. This is also confirmed by the successful deployment of mesh-capable Reconfigurable Add-Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs). Next generation optical networks will be capable of dynamically allocating bandwidth, setting-up and tearing-down lightpaths and providing more advanced real-time resources allocation, evolving from static network topologies to re-configurable networks that change and adapt according to bandwidth requirements.
As an evolution of the core network capacity, special attention is given towards three directions in the physical layer concerning advanced modulation formats (DPSK, DQPSK), transmission bit-rate (targeting deployment of 100 Gb/s) and optical signal regeneration. APACHE exploits hybrid integration technology for delivering Terabit capacity on a single photonic integrated circuit. Its integration concept relies on the combination of Indium-Phosphide monolithic elements, silicon submounts and silica-on-silicon planar lightwave circuits.
APACHE, for the first time, will extend this re-configurability in terms of rate and modulation formats to the transmitter and receiver side by developing multi-format devices and will develop the integration methodology as well as the required underlying photonic technology with an ultimate aim to develop and commercialize agile, terabit-capacity, re-configurable photonic devices compatible with next generation dynamic networks.
Expected results:
The APACHE project aims to design and develop new generation of transmitter, receiver and regenerator photonic circuits capable to handle 100 Gb/s data rates and a multiplicity of modulation formats (OOK, DPSK, DQPSK) that will enhance the transmission efficiency of optical fiber.
AIT's contribution:
AIT will be involved in the parameter extraction and modelling of the APACHE transmitters and receivers. AIT will also join resources with ICCS/NTUA and will combine APACHE devices in a transmission environment and assess their performance. The recirculating loop facilities of AIT will enable the assessment and cascadeability characterization of the APACHE devices under a variety of different system/network conditions, giving valuable feedback to technology partners and system vendor of the project.
The following people are contributing to the APACHE project for AIT:
Prof. Ioannis Tomkos
Dr. Dimitris Klonidis
Dr. Nikos Avlonitis
Partners:
APACHE consortium consists of two academic research centres (ICCS/NTUA,
AIT), one system vendor (Ericsson), and three technology developers, (CIP,
HHI, PhoeniX).
Institute of Communication & Computer Systems, National Technical University
of Athens - Greece www.telecom.ntua.gr/photonics
Centre for Integrated Photonics Ltd - UK
www.ciphotonics.com
Heinrich Hertz Institute - Germany
www.hhi.fraunhofer.de
Ericsson Ltd - UK and Ericsson AB - Sweden
www.ericsson.com
PhoeniX B.V. www.phoenixbv.com
TRIUMPH
Transparent Ring Interconnection Using Multi-wavelength PHotonic switches
Start: 03/2006
End: 02/2009
Funding: EC partly funded
Status: Ongoing
Web: Official WEB Site <http://www.ihq.uni-karlsruhe.de/research/projects/TRIUMPH/>
Project Overview
This project proposes the development of network architectures and system solutions that will facilitate future broadband access networks. The effort will focus on Transparent Ring Interconnection using multi-wavelength photonic switches with the aim to increase the network functionality and capacity. The proposed scenario refers to a high capacity network with transparent connectivity between core/regional-metro rings supporting data rates up to 130Gbit/s and metro-access rings supporting up to 40Gbit/s. The required functionality in such architecture will be provided through an optical switching node located at the interconnection points between rings. The design and development of this node will be the focus of the project with the aim to provide a cost effective solution that can transparently offer inter-domain connectivity. This solution will also support functionalities currently unavailable in the optical layer like transparent optical grooming/aggregation and multi-wavelength 2R optical regeneration. Transparency will enable a variety of data rates, protocols and formats that are present in the metro and access network environments and are associated with the requirements of new and emerging services and applications that are rapidly becoming available to the end-users.
Expected Results
The innovations introduced by the project aim at establishing a breakthrough in the implementation and deployment of advanced optical communications across an interdisciplinary array of both industrial and research stakeholders. It is expected to bring a significant impact in a number of areas including: network architectures, system implementation and technologies suitable for future broadband networks: access, metro-access and core-metro.
AIT's contribution
AIT is responsible for performing system level simulations aiming to define the network specifications according to the physical layer requirements. It is also responsible for performing value analysis studies which will reveal the cost efficiency of the proposed network scenarios within the TRIUMPH-MAN. Great effort is put in the investigation of 2R multi-wavelength regeneration employing fiber-based and semiconductor-based technologies. In particular, AIT will investigate the performance of two multi-wavelength regenerators based on highly-non-linear-fibers (HNLFs) exploiting self–phase modulation (XPM) and a semiconductor-based regeneration scheme comprising of two cascaded Quantum-Dot Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (QD-SOAs) exploiting the cross-gain modulation (XGM) effect within the narrow independent gain spectral regions allowing in this way for operation on a per wavelength basis.
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