Pioneering hardware modeling and software design for optical infrastructure in the Autonomous Network project

Abstract

Experimental platforms are essential to demonstrate the potential benefits that Software Defined Networking (SDN) can bring to optical metro and backbone carriers' infrastructure. In this context, the Autonomous Network (AN) project is an SDN-enabled five-node metropolitan optical network test-bed located at CPqD. The AN main objective is to bring novel SDN concepts and capabilities down to the physical/optical layer for performance improvements in different dimensions. In this paper, we first present a comprehensive description of the AN infrastructure comprising the pioneering modeling of hardware equipment and software design in the SDN controller. Then, we review recent research activities, which include SDN-enabled adaptive and cognitive algorithms to improve end-to-end performance, and experimental demonstrations in the optical layer. Finally, we comment on different SDN designs and white-box networking to enable further equipment programmability in future optical networks.