Network Design and Services Research Area

Research Projects

1. Phosphorus “Lamda User Controlled Infrastructure for European Research”

Start:  October 1, 2006
Duration:  30 Months
Funding: EU
Status: Ongoing
Official WEB Site:
http://www.ist-phosphorus.eu/

Project Overview
A new generation of scientific applications is emerging that couples scientific instruments, data and high-end computing resources distributed on a global scale. Developed by collaborative, virtual communities, many of these applications have requirements such as determinism (e.g. guaranteed QoS), shared data spaces, large data transfers, that are often achievable only through dedicated optical bandwidth.
High capacity optical networking can satisfy bandwidth and latency requirements, but software tools and frameworks for end-to-end, on-demand provisioning of network services need to be developed in coordination with other resources (CPU and storage) and need to span multiple administrative and network technology domains.
In response to the above requirements, Phosphorus will address some of the key technical challenges to enable on-demand e2e network services across multiple domains. The Phosphorus network concept and test-bed will make applications aware of their complete grid resources (computational and networking) environment and capabilities, and able to make dynamic, adaptive and optimized use of heterogeneous network infrastructures connecting various high-end resources.

Expected Results
Phosphorus will enhance and demonstrate solutions that facilitate vertical and horizontal communication among applications middleware, existing Network Resource Provisioning Systems, and the proposed Grid-GMPLS Control Plane
The Phosphorus assessment will rely on experimental activities on a distributed test-bed interconnecting European and worldwide optical infrastructures. Specifically, the test-bed will involve European NRENs and national test-beds, as well as international resources (G�ANT2, Internet2, Canarie, Cross Border Dark Fibre infrastructures and GLIF virtual facility). A set of highly demanding applications will be adapted to prove the concept.
Phosphorus will disseminate procedures, toolkits and middleware to the EU NRENs and their users, such as Supercomputing centers and the wider European and worldwide scientific users.

AIT's contribution
•    Routing in optical grids
•    Design of the optical network infrastructure in support of grids
•    Grid network control architecture and interfaces
•    Optimization of grid job execution in wavelength-routed networks

Partners

2. BONE: “Building the Future Optical Network in Europe”

Start:  January 2008
Duration: 36 months
Funding: EU
Status: Ongoing
Official WEB Site:
http://www.ict-bone.eu/portal/faces/public/BONE/inici

Project Overview
The BONE network brings together 49 laboratories and research institutes from all over Europe in a close networking infrastructure, built on the foundations laid down by the FP6 ePhoton/ONe Network and represents the research activities within Europe in the field of Optical Networks. The core activity of the BONE project is the stimulation of intensified collaboration, exchange of researchers and integration of activities and know-how into and amongst partners. Through the establishment of Virtual Centers of Excellence, the BONE project looks into the future and builds and supports the final "Network of the Future" through education & training, research tools & test-beds on new technologies & architectures.
The leading-edge position of European Research in the field and, consequently, of European industry, could be threatened by returning to an uncoordinated and scattered approach to optical networking research. BONE consolidates the process, supported during FP6, of integration and reorganization of research efforts across European academic and industrial groups in FP7.

Partners
Below is the list of the 49 institutions from 17 different countries involved in BONE.
IBBT (B), TUW (A), FPMs (B),Fraunhofer (D), TUB (D),UDE (D), UST-IKR (D), COM (DK), CTTC (E), TID (E), UAM (E),UC3M(E), UPC (E), UPCT (E), UPVLC (E), UVIGO (E), FT (F), GET (F), AIT (GR), ICCS/NTUA (GR), RACTI (GR), UOA (GR), UOP(GR), BME (H), FER (HR), CORITEL (I), FUB (I), ISCOM (I), POLIMI (I), POLITO(I), SSSUP (I), DEIS - UNIBO(I), UNIMORE (I), UNIROMA1 (I), TELENOR (N), TUE (NL), IT (P), AGH (PL), PUT (PL), HUAWEI(S), KTH (S), Bilkent (TR), UNIROMA3(I), ORC(UK), UCAM (UK), UCL (UK), UESSEX (UK), USWAN (UK), Ericsson (UK)

Expected Results

• Build Virtual Centres of Excellence that cover specific issues in the field of Optical Networking that can serve the European industry with education & training, research tools & test-beds and pave the way to development of new technologies & architectures;
• Reach out, including and linking to research activities in national programmes, or programmes outside Europe;
• Stimulate an intensified collaboration, exchange of researchers between the research groups involved and active in the field;
• Disseminate the expertise and know-how of these European Research groups to a broader audience, both R&D oriented as well as industry- and decision maker oriented.

AIT's contribution

• Optical grid network design and dimensioning
• Resilience in optical network infrastructures supporting traditional telecommunications and grid applications
• Routing approaches and algorithms suitable for network infrastructures supporting traditional telecommunications and grid applications
• Grid network control architecture and interfaces
• Optimization of grid job execution in wavelength-routed networks
• Routing algorithms for resilient OBS networks
• QoS differentiation in OBS networks

 
3. TRIUMPH “Transparent Ring Interconnection Using Multiwavelength PHotonic switches”

Start:  March 2006
Duration: 36 months
Funding: EU
Status: Ongoing
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 networks with transparent connectivity between core/regional-metro rings supporting data rates up to 160Gbit/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. Our approach will offer transparent optical grooming/aggregation and multi-wavelength 2R optical regeneration. This 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.

Partners

Participant #	Participant full name	Acronym	Country	Role
1	University of Karlsruhe	UKA	Germany	CO
2	Siemens S.A.	SIEMENS	Portugal	CR
3	Kailight Photonics	Kailight	Israel	CR
4	RESIT- Athens Information Technology	AIT	Greece	CR
5	University College Cork	UCC	Ireland	CR
6	Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton	ORC	UK	CR
7	Technical University of Berlin	TUB	Germany	CR
8	University of Essex	UoE	UK	CR

Expected Results
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. More specifically it will:

 

• Provide improvement of the signal quality and the overall network performance through optical multi-wavelength 2R regeneration, thus enabling the transparency requirements.
• Provide all optical grooming/aggregation, i.e. conversion of lower rate WDM signals into higher rate single channel OTDM streams and vice versa, further enhancing the transparent functionality of the proposed system, offering an additional feature required in metro and access network environments.
• Offer reduced-power consumption and compact size

Through these advanced functionalities and features the TRIUMPH will support:
•    improved network infrastructures with very high capacity and increased scalability

AIT's contribution

• Network scenario and architecture design
• Techno-economic value analysis study
• System design and performance evaluation
• Simulations
• Experimental laboratory work

4. COST291 “Towards Digital Optical Networks”

Start:  October 2004
Duration: 4 years
Funding: EU
Status: Finishing…
Official WEB Site: http://www.ait.edu.gr/cost291/

Project Overview
The COST291 action entitled “Towards Digital Optical Networks” (TDON) is a COST action supported by the EU. The primary objective of COST291 is to focus on novel network concepts and architectures exploiting the features and properties of photonic technologies, to enable future telecommunications networks.

Expected Results
The action is aiming at proposing a new generation of systems and networks that will accommodate the unpredictable and growing size of data files and messages exchanged and stored as well as real time services (e.g. voice, video etc) over global distances requiring an agile Communication Grid supporting quality services. These need to provide end-to-end bandwidth for transmission of traffic for applications such as information retrieval, downloading (often multimedia) web software, exchange of various type of software (hundreds of Mbytes) and data models (Gbytes) etc as well as real time multimedia applications.

AIT's contribution
•    Optical system design and performance evaluation
•    Resilience in optical network infrastructures
•    Routing approaches and algorithms suitable for optical network infrastructures
•    Burst assembly schemes for OBS networks
•    QoS differentiation in OBS networks

5. BReATH: Broadband e-Services and Access for the Home

Start:  June 2005
Duration: 18 months
Funding: EU
Status: Finished
Official WEB Site: http://www.ist-breath.net/

Project Overview
To stimulate and support the transfer of know-how and best practices in planning and
delivering broadband e-services and access to the EU New Member States and Associated Candidate Countries, involving as many stakeholders and actors as possible and fostering cross-border research collaboration.

Results

• Surveys and benchmarking studies report
• Business cases and success stories in the roll-out of broadband access and e-services
• Dissemination to NMS and ACC of know-how regarding broadband access technologies, best practices, regulations, guidelines and strategic planning
• Roadmap identifying key steps to widespread take-up
• ‘Step Forward’ initiative, raise the awareness of the various stakeholders and stimulate the take-up of broadband

Partners

Partic. Role*	Partic. No.	Participant name	Acronym	Country
CO	1	Eindhoven University of Technology	TUE	Netherlands
CR	2	Research Education Society in Information Technologies / Athens Information Technology	AIT	Greece
CR	3	GTel Consultancy Ltd.	GTEL	UK
CR	4	National Institute of Telecommunications	NIT	Poland
CR	5	Josef Stefan Institute	IJS	Slovenia
CR	6	Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics	IREE	Czech Republic
CR	7	European Institute for Research and Strategic Studies in Telecommunications GmbH	Eurescom	Germany

AIT's contribution

• Organization of events
• Techno-economic studies
• Development of case studies

6. e-Photon/OΝe+ “Optical Networks: Towards Bandwidth Manageability and Cost Efficiency”

Start:  March 2006
Duration: 2 years
Funding: EU
Status: Finished
Official WEB Site: http://www.e-photon-one.org/ephotonplus/servlet/photonplus.Generar

Project Overview
The basic goal of e-Photon/ONe+ is to foster the introduction of optical technologies in telecommunication networks beyond point-to-point transmission, and to show the advantages offered by optical technologies to telecommunication networks with respect to electronic technologies in both telecom networks and customer-controlled grids.
Its major objectives are:

• to integrate and focus the rich know-how available in Europe on optical networking, from optical technologies, to networking devices, to network architectures and protocols, to new services fostered by photonic technologies;
• to favour a co-ordination among the participants to reach a consensus on the engineering choices towards the deployment of optical networks, providing inputs to the standardization bodies and guidelines to the operators;
• to provide guidelines for the design of an optical Internet backbone, metro, access and in-home infrastructure, supporting traffic engineering and quality of service management in an end-to-end perspective;
• to understand how the intrinsic characteristic of optical networks can be used to provide acceptable levels of quality of service and protection/restoration inside and across network domains;
• to promote and organize integration activities aiming at establishing a good exchange of information among participating institutions and long-lasting collaboration among partners;
• to promote and organize activities to disseminate knowledge on optical networks.

Results
The technical focus of e-Photon/ONe+ includes both incrementally improving and new emerging -and possibly disruptive- optical technologies that are suited as the foundation for the future Internet, with the strong intention to raise awareness on the huge potentials of optical technologies and to provide competitive feedback to European telecom equipment manufacturers. The project has addressed a very wide variety of thematic areas in both research and training.

Partners

No.	Acronym	Full Name & Country
1	PoliTO	Politecnico di Torino - Italy
2	ALCATEL	ALCATEL ITALIA S.p.A. - Italy
3	DEIS-UNIBO	Alma Mater Studiorum - Università degli Studi di Bologna - Italy
4	FUB	Fondazione Ugo Bordoni - Italy
5	PoliMI	Politecnico di Milano - Italy
6	SSSUP	Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento - Italy
7	TID	Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo Sociedad Anónima Unipersonal - Spain
8	UAM	Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - Spain
9	UC3M	Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - Spain
10	UPC	Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - Spain
11	UPVLC	Universidad Politécnica de Valencia - Spain
12	IT	Instituto de TelecomunicaΓ§ões - Portugal
13	GET	Groupe des Ecoles des Télécommunications - France
14	FT	France Telecom - France
15	FPMs	Faculté Polytechnique de Mons - Belgium
16	IBBT	Interdisciplinair instituut voor BreedBand Technologie vzw - Belgium
17	MULT	MULTITEL - Belgium
18	TU/e	Technische Universiteit Eindhoven - The Netherlands
19	FLE	Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Ltd. - United Kingdom
20	IRC	Intel Corporation UK Ltd - United Kingdom
21	ORC-CC2	The University of Southampton - United Kingdom
22	UCL	University College London - United Kingdom
23	UEssex	University of Essex - United Kingdom
24	DTU	Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Technical University of Denmark) - Denmark
25	KTH	Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan - Sweden
26	TELENOR	Telenor ASA - Norway
27	Fraunhofer	Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. - Germany
28	TUB	Technische Universität Berlin - Germany
29	UDE	Universität Duisburg-Essen - Germany
30	UST-IKR	Universitaet Stuttgart - Germany
31	TUW	Technische Universitaet Wien (Vienna University of Technology) - Austria
32	AGH	Akademia Gorniczo-Hutnicza - Poland
33	BME	Budapest University of Technology and Economics - Hungary
34	TELFER	Sveuciliste u Zagrebu Fakultet Elektrotehnike i Racunarstva - Croatia
35	AIT	Research and Education Society in Information Technologies - Greece
36	CTI	Research Academic Computer Technology Institute - Greece
37	ICCS/NTUA	Institute of Communication and Computer Systems/National Technical University of Athens - Greece
38	UoA	National and Kapodestrian University of Athens - Greece
39	UoPelop	University of Peloponnese - Greece
40	BILKENT	Bilkent Universitesi - Turkey
41	UCAM-DENG	University of Cambridge -

AIT's contribution

• Optical system design and performance evaluation
• Burst assembly schemes for OBS networks
• QoS differentiation in OBS networks

 

7. Autonomous Optical Networks for Global Grid Computing Applications

Start:  February 2006
Duration: 2 years            
Funding: GSRT/British Council
Status: Finished
Official WEB Site: -

Project Overview
The project was aiming at exploring a novel Grid network scenario serving a large number of users that submit a large number of jobs for processing based on an optical infrastructure where the Grid resource discovery, allocation and path setup will be performed in a self-organised manner by the optical layer. Due to the nature of the applications supported by global Grid computing, suitable network infrastructures are required to offer a set of features that are very different to those of traditional telecommunications infrastructures. Therefore, new avenues concerning node and network infrastructures will be investigated, concentrating on optical burst-switching (OBS) as the transport mechanism offering intelligence both in the transport layer as well as the control and management of the network.

Results

• Design and demonstration of a novel ingress edge router solution that offers hybrid functionality including both optical burst and circuit switching capabilities (OBCS) that can be used to enable ubiquitous photonic Grid networking.
•  
Design and development of a test-bed (at Essex University) comprising:
o    A hybrid optical core router that supported the Grid application requirement for dynamic path reconfiguration with both high low speed switching capabilities for short and long jobs respectively,
o    The appropriate Grid edge devices that are the interface between Grid users and the proposed network
o    An advanced control and signaling mechanism that realized the developed protocols for job scheduling and submission based on quality of service

Partners
University of Essex, UK, and Athens Information Technology, Greece

AIT’s contribution

•  Development of OBS simulation capabilities
• Study of burst assembly algorithms suitable for OBS
• Contribution in the design and implementation of the project test-bed and experiments at the University of Essex