NTT, in collaboration with Ciena, Fujitsu, and NEC Corporation (NEC), will conduct Open All Photonics Network (APN) proof-of-concept (PoC) trial of on-demand wavelength technologies.
NTT said the work is based on the Open All Photonics Network (APN) Functional Architecture document published by the IOWN GF earlier this year.
The network nodes defined in the Open APN Functional Architecture can be constructed from the Open ROADM MSA’s standard components, which are available from global optical product vendors such as Ciena, Fujitsu, and NEC. To prove the viability and operability of Open APN, NTT will conduct a PoC jointly with Ciena, Fujitsu, NEC, and other companies in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022. The PoC will validate wavelength connection creation/deletion functions and evaluate the performance of optical communications in terms of throughput, delay, and jitter.
The PoC should prove that Open APN is implementable and operable with products already available in the global market and encourage many organizations in the world to build and implement Open APN.
While conventional ROADM products are designed to create optical connections between telecommunication carriers’ sites, an Open APN creates connections between all endpoints, including customer sites. This difference leads to the need for new functions as listed below:
- A function for automatically designing and provisioning wavelength connections that satisfy service requirements by cooperation and coordination of terminals deployed in user sites and carrier equipment, and functions for selecting the best transmission mode, etc.
- A function for configuring and managing optical wavelength end points of terminals deployed in user sites and a function for passing and blocking optical signals in carrier equipment based on the authentication status of each terminal
- A function for adapting different types of optical fibers to be connected in the same optical wavelength
NTT has developed the above functions and started a field test in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The test should validate their operability under various conditions, such as fiber length and loss levels in a real environment. As the test will also utilize the outcome from Open ROADM MSA and Telecom Infra Project Open Optical & Packet Transport6, it should demonstrate how the results from the three organizations can be combined to build open and disaggregated infrastructures.
