Towards Broadband Global Optical

and Wireless Networking

Marian Marciniak
National Institute of Telecommunications
Warsaw, Poland
 Acknowledgements to
• COST 266 Advanced Infrastructure for Photonic Networks
•  
• COST 270 Reliability of Optical Components and Devices in
Communications Systems and Networks
•
• COST 273 Towards Broadband Mobile Multimedia Networks
•  
• URSI Commission D Electronics and Photonics
•  
• ITU Study Group 15 Optical and Other Transport Networks
•  
• IEC Technical Committee 86 Fibre Optics
•  
• and NEXWAY Network of Excellence

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 MOTIVATION
• Radio-over-fibre transmision can be realised in the core
networks even at large distances, with potential of
amplification/switching in the optical domain - COST
Action 273 “Towards Broadband Mobile Multimedia
Networks”
• Radio-over-fibre arrangements can be applied in the
access part of the Mobile Broadband Systems (MBS) in
60 GHz band.
• The 60 GHz millimeter-wave band is a goal frequency
band for mobile broadband services allocation.
• attenuation 10dB/km@60GHz! light in fibres <0.2dB/km
• This study – to propose a hybrid network for Global
Optical and Wireless Networking
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 OUTLINE

     Introduction
• Voice vs. IP specifics
     Transparent photonic transport network
     All - optical solutions
     Hybrid network concept
     Conclusions
 

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 INTRODUCTION
     Dramatic growth of Internet traffic.
     almost stable voice traffic .
     Actual networks are based on classical “circuit
switching” principle.
     Internet and data traffic exhibit inherent “packet
switched” features.
• Transparent terabit optical network infrastructure
provides an excellent realization of circuit switched
network.
But it is not capable to realise packed switched services
in an efficient way.

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 Voice traffic
• Circuit switched
• Deterministic
• Real time, i.e. without noticeable delays
• no retransmission if some bits are lost
• inherent Quality of Service guarantees
• Well developed SDH/ATM technology

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 Packet traffic
• Statistic (bursts!)
• Packet switched, connectionless
• „best effort”, no QoS guarantees
• Latency (time delay)
• lost packets, can be retransmitted
• efficient optical buffering wanted!

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   

 

Transparency story 

- - - - - optics
________ electronics

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 EDFA 
 The introduction of Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifiers
(EDFA) which have replaced electronic regenerators in
fibre based transmission links in early 90s resulted in
optical transparency of the links.

 This was in contrary with electronic regenerator based

links. In those a combination of electronic logic circuit
along with electro-optical and opto-electrical
conversions of the digital signal transmitted has been
used in order to cope with signal distortion.

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THE NOTION OF TRANSPARENCY
OF A TRANSMISSION LINK:
     the output signal is proportional to the signal at the
input.
• This provides a potential to modulate and detect the
optical wave power with microwave or milimetre
wave envelope
 The transparency is rather an analogue feature of a link
what is in contrary to digital transmission schemes.
 Transparency in optical domain has its common sense:
a medium is transparent if the light goes through it.

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 Ideal case:
 signal at the output exactly the same as in the input,
 obviously with acceptation of time delay caused by
finite value of light velocity,
 and eventually of attenuation of the signal power.
 But without degradation of its other characteristics!
 Unfortunately that ideal situation is not realisable in an
optical network.
Even an ideal glass fibre exhibits attenuation,
chromatic dispersion, and optical nonlinearities.
Real fibres – PMD!

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Vacuum is the only medium ideally
transparent:
     no attenuation,
     no dispersion,
     and no nonlinear interactions.
 
Even in free-space optical beams are subjects of diffraction!
     diffraction is overcome in fibre based 1-D telecommunication links.
     It is compensated with the guiding core focusing properties,
Fibre modes are special beams having unique property of perfectly
vanished total effect of diffraction and focusing interplay.

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 Transparent photonic
network
    insures the scalability, i.e. possibility of future upgrades
    Almost unlimited capacity is available
New demands, especially in optical signal digital processing

    full 3R (4R?) regeneration (4th in spectral domain, Thylén, ICTON'99)

    Wavelength - new degree of freedom (wavelength-switched and routed
networks)
    wavelength converters (C)

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 Transparency of the network in
practical point of view:
 
The networks provides a telecommunication cloud
Clients send and receive properly their information
regardless of:
        Wavelength
        Transmission speed
        Format used (analogue, digital)
Data need no special adaptation procedure to be
transmitted through the network.
Possibility to modulate optical wave with microwave
signal
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 Transparency of:
•  

The fibre itself (attenuation spectrum)

The optical amplifier (gain spectrum)

Other system components.

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(lack of) Transparency constraints
• Ideal glass fibre
      attenuation
      chromatic dispersion
      nonlinear interactions
 
Real fibre: Polarization Mode Dispersion, PMD, results from random
local lack of circular symmetry of the fibre due to :
      technology imperfections
      local stresses caused by cable layout.
 
Those analogue features of a fibre result in:
      distortion, crosstalk
      and noise of the transmitted optical signal.

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 The term "PMD" is used
      in the general sense of two polarization modes having
different group velocities,
      and in the specific sense of the expected value of
differential group delay <Δτ> between two orthogonally
polarized modes.
  
      PMD causes the spreading of a pulse in the time domain
      It is actually the main transmission distance-limiting
factor in 40 Gbit/s systems and above
      as such it became recently a subject of intense research
both for fibre optimisation and characterization

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 Transparency constraints II
•  
• Very high wavelength precision and stability of optical sources is
a fundamental requirement of a Dense WDM network
•  
• This increases the cost of the devices.
•  
• Goal: not to loose that precious wavelength !
•  
• Solution: keeping the signal in the optical domain while it
traverses as large part of the network as possible.
•  
• This is why transparency is a so important issue.

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 Some questions:
WDM channel spacing 100 GHz = 0.8 nm? 10 Gbit/s TDM ?

50 GHz ? 40 Gbit/s ETDM?

25 GHz ? 160 Gbit/s OTDM?

Requires 200 GHz WDM

12.5 GHz ? (y.2002 standard) 400 Gbit/s OTDM?

WDM or OTDM?
in future: 6.25 GHz? or 5 GHz?

What about 20 nm? Coarse WDM

Bandwidth limitations  DWDM vs. OTDM trade-off

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The optical signal is characterised by
     temporal characteristics: shape absolute and relative
(instantaneous power), and
     spectral characteristics.

So what we do in order the output signal resembles the input one as

much as possible, or at least it is detectable properly?
     To compensate for attenuation, optical amplifiers and especially
Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifiers are already a well-developed
solution.
     To compensate for chromatic dispersion, dispersion-
compensating modules are developed with dispersion
compensating fibres and fibre gratings as typical examples.
     Unfortunately, it is especially difficult to compensate for
nonlinear distortion and interactions.

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 Network behaves
transparent
 
way:
     we allow attenuation and / or amplification,
 
     and eventually wavelength conversion.
 
Transparent wavelength conversion assumes the
conservation of temporal signal shape, which is
superimposed to a different wavelength.
This works with wireless mobile signal modulation of
the optical wave as well.

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Back to the Analogue Age
• Transparent components of the optical network treat the passing
signals in an analogue way.
• Broadband wireless is transmitted as an optical wave properly
modulated in an analogue way.

      The transparent length is a distance over which the signal

can be transmitted successfully.
      Transmission over longer lengths requires some form of
regeneration.
      The transparent length can increase in the future, when the
technology is sufficiently developed.

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 Optical switching in a dynamic
WDM network environment
• Instantaneous network parameters are
          bit-rate
          WDM channel power
          Aggregate optical power
          Number of WDM channels
          Wavelengths
          Transmitter and amplifier output power and
          nonlinear interaction resulting from
          attenuation, chromatic dispersion and PMD

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 The "history" of the signal
 i.e. How much it has suffered from analogue distortion,
noise, cross-talk etc.
•  
• History may be different
for different WDM channels
•  
• History may vary
in a dynamic wavelength allocation environment

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 space
3-D space
Degrees of freedom
of an optical network

time (OTDM)

wavelength (WDM)

 2 polarisations!

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 Optical switching & routing
• Degrees of freedom of an optical network:
     3-D space co-ordinates,
     time (and resulting possibility of Optical Time Domain
Multiplexing, OTDM),
     wavelength (WDM),
     polarisation
• Opportunities for optical switching:
     in space, temporal, wavelength, and polarisation domains.

In addition to that,
• logical on/off switching is performed in optical logic elements.

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 Optical routing
can be realised as wavelength routing in a transparent
way.
     an analogue and passive solution,
     or an analogue and active one if wavelength
conversion is applied.

All-optical packet routing

     involves some intelligence of the router
     and some decision based on the information included
in the packet.
     not realisable transparent way !

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 BASIC FACTS
• Two electrons interact via electromagnetics
• While two photons do not at all!
This is
• Main cause of the great success of optical
transmission
but
• Means great difficulities for
all-optical switching/signal processing !

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 All-Optical Opacity
•  Even though all-optical routing element involves
optical logics, optical memory, etc.,
• it is not optically transparent and it exploits optically
opaque elements.
 
• The signal remains in optical domain, but digital
operations result in that the fundamental transparency
condition of proportionality of output and input signals
is not satisfied.

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 HYBRID NETWORK CONCEPT
• Voice and broadband wireless signals transmitted via
circuit-switched subnetwork with digital (voice) or
analogue (wireless) coding,
• while IP is transmitted as packet-switched
connectionless traffic.
• Voice/wireless is carried on dynamically allocated
wavelengths, according to instantaneous demand for
real-time services.
• The two kinds of traffic are separated and interleaved
in frequency (wavelength) domain, not in time
domain.

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 Voice + IP hybrid network table
Characteristics Voice, real-time Internet, data
incl. Mobile wireless signal
Basic principle Circuit-switched /ATM Packet-switched
Packet length Constant length cells Variable
Lost data No retransmission Retransmitted
Quality of Service Guaranteed by overprovisioning Best-effort
Traffic Deterministic Statistic
Other Instantaneous bandwidth (# of λs) Intelligence
controlled logically in IP routers
Transparent Includes all-optical opacity
Bandwidth Dedicated on demand As wide as available
Access Conventional twisted-pair access to Broadband access to
public exchange offices for voice, servers,
or wireless access e.g. via cable-TV
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 CONCLUSIONS
Hybrid network saves voice technology with transparent transmission.
Real-time traffic including mobile wireless realised via dynamically
allocated wavelengths as circuit-switched traffic.
The number of wavelengths allocated by IP layer for instantaneous
demand for real-time traffic.
Broadband wireless signal modulates the optical wavelength power.
All remaining wavelengths are for the IP traffic.
IP free of real-time restrictions, with potential of:
variable-packet length,
no idle bits,
best-effort scheme.
Whole available bandwidth can be fully exploited.
Quality of Service can be differentiated for IP.
.

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Thank You

Questions?