PhotonIp
Transport technology is key in the development of pure optical networks must be flexible and scalable as well as bit rate independent and protocol transparent. More importantly, pure optical networks should incorporate photonic switching as a fundamental building block.
PhotonIP or photonic packet switching can be defined as the ability to quickly direct (switch and transport) bursts of modulated light (wavelengths/ultrafast circuit-switching), maintained solely in the optical domain, to any or all outgoing optical ports.
PhotonIP is defined by three variables:
1) a unit of optical bandwidth (wavelength today, optical packet
in the future);
2) processing speed (milliseconds today, nanoseconds in the near future)and;
3) an optical network computing function (modulation, transmission, signaling, optical multicast, wavelength conversion, add-drop, regeneration, and cross-connect switching).
Luxcore's Enabling Technologies
Optical Switch Core
The use of a fully transparent optical switch core in the transport architecture
is essential in improving the efficiency and scalability of optical networks.
A pure optical switch core eliminates the need for optical-electrical-optical
(OEO) conversions to manipulate wavelengths. Maintaining signals in the
pure optical domain eliminates hundreds of components (such as transponders,
fiber connections, patch panels) that contribute to the "bandwidth
bottleneck".
A pure optical switch is also far more flexible and scalable than its electrical or hybrid counterparts because a pure optical switch manages photons and not bit rates. Carriers do not need to replace expensive opto-electric transponders when higher transmission rates become available.
Flexible Wavelength Selection
As the demand for bandwidth increases, a need for additional
wavelengths to be dropped or added at a particular node in the network. It would be advantageous to network operators if the transport
technology deployed was capable of dynamically allocating additional bandwidth
(wavelengths), via software and control algorithms, to various nodes in
the network without requiring major, expensive, and time-consuming modifications.
The use of tunable laser and wavelength-selective device technology allows flexible configuration and operation of the pure optical network without requiring expensive modifications. Again, the use of this technology allows efficient and cost-effective bandwidth utilization providing additional revenue opportunities to the network operator. Several innovative schemes have been utilized by Luxcore to flexibly and dynamically terminate and add traffic at a given node. Another benefit of Luxcore's technology implementation is that interchannel crosstalk-like noise generated by interactions of closely spaced channels in multiplexed multi-wavelength traffic is greatly reduced.
Pure Optical Wavelength Conversion
High capacity optical networks should include some means of performing
wavelength conversion to resolve wavelength contention. As the number
of DWDM nodes increases, the probability of blocking at a node increases
when two channels at the same wavelength are routed to the same output
port. Therefore, wavelength conversion is a necessity for effective, efficient
use of bandwidth in very large, high capacity networks with dynamic bandwidth
demands.
Wavelength converters can be classified as opto-electronic or pure optical
devices. It is beneficial in the pure optical network to incorporate
pure optical wavelength conversion devices. Transparency is extremely
important to ensure easy, inexpensive upgrades in network capacity in
the future.
Advanced Network Intelligence and Bandwidth Provisioning
Luxcore is developing advanced real-time end-to-end wavelength provisioning, traffic engineering and fault isolation software that realizes maximum functionality of its pure optical internetworking product solutions. The distinguishing factor of Luxcore's software architecture is the exploitation of
packet based technologies to permit rapid deployment of internationalized QoS and CoS-based network services.
Luxcore's approach is to field a modular and extensible software architecture that combines the best features of classic element management with policy based traffic engineering. Luxcore software supports multiple, configurable route calculation algorithms as well as configurable policy based route protection and restoration regimes. Luxcore element management, traffic engineering, and network element software is designed from the onset to be fault tolerant and robust. It will support advanced real-time node and link monitoring, network topology and link attribute auto discovery, bandwidth demand forecasting, and capacity planning. Our software API will support a number of standard interfaces including CORBA, SNMP, TL1, XML, and LDAP.
The Luxcore product portfolio incorporates innovative approaches, technologies, optical hardware and software, that will aid in the deployment of true PhotonicIP in optical network.
Currently Luxcore is focusing upon two technologies:
