NTT and NEC published results of a field demonstration of optical wavelength path provisioning technology based on IOWN.
The tests demonstrated on-demand, high-capacity/low-latency connections among data centers through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) COSMOS testbed in the U.S. with Politecnico di Torino, Columbia University, Duke University, and Trinity College Dublin.
The results were presented earlier this month at the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) in Glasgow.
NTT has been collaborating with NEC, a member of the IOWN Global Forum, to verify technologies to implement data center exchange (DCX) services that directly connect many data centers built in metro areas via optical fiber. DCX requires the connection of devices from multiple vendors between many-to-many locations with various transmission modes suitable for link length and quality (Figure 2). Unlike conventional DCI, new technology development has been required to control devices from multiple vendors across the user access links and carrier links and to set up optical wavelength paths on demand with various transmission devices in different transmission modes suitable for the link’s quality.
NEC has developed an open platform with Linux-based device software architecture that utilizes open interfaces, specifications, and architectures defined by Open ROADM MSA (*11), TIP, and the IOWN Global Forum. NEC leveraged Open ROADM MSA-compliant coherent TRxs to ensure data plane interconnectivity. For the hardware abstraction interface and network operating system (NOS) that controls user TRxs, NEC applied the TAI architecture (that hides the differences among various TRx form factors or vendors) and the Goldstone NOS that are under development openly in TIP OOPT.
Another key innovation is a simple signal quality model developed by NTT that can be applied to short links. It combines a Gaussian noise model with a method for designing and configuring optical wavelength paths on demand, even when crossing multiple user access links and carrier links and when using a wide variety of WDM transceivers.
