Novel Network Architecture for Optical Burst Transport

Transport networks form the backbone of communication networks by cost-efficiently offering huge bandwidth and by guaranteeing a high service quality and availability. These requirements can best be met by using optical communication technologies. Currently, wavelength-switching is the most prominent network technology employing optical fiber communication and wavelength division multiplexing. It transports data in circuit-switched wavelength channels, the so-called lightpaths. While for years progress in optical networks has been defined by ever increasing transmission bit-rates, higher flexibility and manageability as well as multi-service and multi-layer integration are equally important criteria today. Accounting for these trends, optical burst switching (OBS) has been proposed as a highly dynamic optical network architecture. It offers fine-granular transport of different packet-switched services and applies statistical multi-plexing directly in the optical layer. This thesis presents the design, modeling, and evaluation of the optical burst transport network architecture (OBTN). The architecture is motivated by the need for flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient transport in next generation networks. In addition, it is stimulated by the research activities towards highly dynamic optical network infrastructures. OBTN defines a network architecture to transport and switch optical burst data in a core network. The design objectives for the OBTN architecture are (i) an overall high quality of service, (ii) a network design allowing for cost-efficiency and scalability, and (iii) a network evolution perspective based on the current wavelength-switched networks. These objectives are achieved by combining selected concepts, architectures, and strategies of optical burst and optical packet switching as well as of multi-layer traffic engineering. In order to provide the background information for the design of OBTN, Chapter 2 introduces the general characteristics, requirements, and trends for next generation transport networks. Also , it discusses the concept of layering in next generation networks and its application in layer networks for the virtualization of transport resources. Consequently, virtual topology design and dimensioning are analyzed to quantify the trade-offs regarding connectivity and resource requirements. Chapter 2 also reviews the fundamental technologies as well as currently emerging data and control plane architectures for optical transport networks. This presentation is then extended towards a long-term perspective. It describes architectural constraints and classification criteria for highly dynamic optical network architectures. These criteria are used to characterize the fast optical circuit switching, optical burst switching, and optical packet switching archi-tectures. Then, hybrid optical network architectures are discussed as a framework to combine wavelength-switched and optical burst/packet-switched networks. i ii Summary Chapter …