Demonstration of a Novel Framework for Proactive Maintenance Using Failure Prediction and Bit Lossless Protection With Autonomous Network Diagnosis System

Abstract

We propose a novel framework for proactive maintenance that realizes disruption-free networks with low latency and reliability. The proactive replacement of failure-predicted network components is demonstrated based on diagnoses of optical fiber bend estimates and bit lossless protection in optical transport networks. The proposed framework consists of autonomous diagnostics, protection switching, and maintenance tasks. The processes of autonomous diagnosis use the “CAT platform,” which is a technique for identifying faults through cycles of information “Collection”, “Analysis”, and “control and Testing” and includes a failure prediction technique without bit errors that can estimate the bend state of remote optical fiber. The protection switching process uses the bit lossless protection switching of the optical transport network (OTN) layer based on 1+1 protection. For the proactive maintenance frameworks, we evaluate the change in relative latency between working and protection routes on 1+1 protection and count the bit losses between detection of failure prediction, protection switching, replacement of faulty components, and restoration switching. Using our proposed framework, it is possible to systematically replace failure-predicted components without any bit loss, which will eliminate service disruption and greatly reduce the operation expenditure (OPEX).