MOMENTUM - Management, control and monitoring of petabit networks featuring hybrid wavelength/mode/core multiplexing

This is a research contract that addresses SDN control of optical networks featuring Pb/s links, and optical performance monitoring of ultra-high capacity optical networks. These topics are investigated taking into account two different scenarios.

Regarding the first scenario, the signal parameters for each optical spectral/spatial channel can be adaptively and flexibly adjusted by interfacing with the Tx and Rx DSPs (e.g., Constellation, bitrate, equalization, FEC, etc.) and Optical Spectrum Analysers (OSA) This requires to configure and monitor the state of a set of optical signal parameters on the actual hardware and update the proposed NETCONF/YANG data model with the new set of parameters. It is also required to deploy a monitoring manager integrated with the transport SDN controller for the collection and processing of monitoring data from the SDN agents. The specific scenario proposed deals with the configuration of the transceivers (constellation, bitrate, equalization, FEC…) for targeting a specific traffic need and crosscheck that the main figures of merit per slice (e.g. output power, Q-factor/BER,…) are those expected.

For the second scenario, the availability of higher bandwidth in the control/management plane, combined with the introduction of big data analytics and improved processing capabilities at the network controllers opens the way for effective telemetry systems that will provide accurate and real-time knowledge of data information. NETCONF protocol has some limitations
to deal with real-time monitoring parameters and it is required to deploy new protocols such as gRPC for telemetry monitoring issues. This protocol would be implemented both in the SDN agents and the SDN controller. The use case envisioned, requiring real-time monitoring for failure detection/localization, involves the continuous monitoring of several figures of merit per slice (e.g. OSNR, optical power, Q-factor/BER…) and force a signal degradation. This event is expected to degrade the figures of merit under continuous monitoring and, therefore, the control/management plane will detect it and reconfigure the transceivers (e.g. setting alternative constellation, bitrate, equalization, FEC…) in order to achieve a successful data transmission.