As an important part of the information infrastructure and the bearing base, the importance of optical fiber communication networks in supporting the construction of new infrastructure and helping the digital transformation of industries is self-evident. The national "14th Five-Year Plan" and the "14th Five-Year Plan" of the information and communication industry issued in 2021 attach great importance to the future development of optical fiber communication networks, and accelerating the development of Gigabit optical networks and continuously promoting the evolution of backbone networks and the upgrading of service capabilities have become the focus of China's broadband network development.
Looking forward to 2022, optical network construction will focus on the continuous innovation and development of multiple dimensions such as 400G/800G speed and capacity increase, differentiated networking, AI enhancement, open decoupling exploration, and photoelectric integration, helping Gigabit optical networks to accelerate applications.
Accelerate and increase capacity and continue to develop in multiple paths
400G/800G technology is accelerating
In the face of the bearer requirements of many new broadband services with diversified functions and differentiated performance, optical networks will continue to speed up and increase capacity along various ways such as increasing the transmission rate of single-channel transmission, increasing the effective transmission band, and increasing the spatial multiplexing dimension (air separation multiplexing), further enhancing the high-speed bandwidth transmission capacity of the new infrastructure. Considering the potential application demand, the development trend of the high-speed transmission technology industry and other factors, it is expected that the 400Gbit/s and 800Gbit/s single-channel transmission rates will still be the focus of the industry, of which the application of the 400Gbit/s wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) system in the metropolitan area network, which is mainly based on data center interconnection, will further increase, and the industry will continue to promote the 400Gbit/s WDM system for trunk long distance or ultra-long distance, and the 800Gbit/s for the metropolitan transmission distance Experimental verification or application pilot verification of WDM systems.
Under the strong impetus of standards or alliance organizations such as IEEE, OIF, IPEC and CCSA, a variety of technical solutions for 800Gbit/s user-side and line interfaces will gradually stabilize, and the standardization work is expected to make substantial progress. In addition, large-capacity transmission based on C-band expansion (100Gbit/s rate and above), submarine cable communication based on air separation multiplexing (multi-core multiplexing) and other related deployment applications continue to be carried out, and multi-band expansion of C+L, S+C+L and other multi-band expansion for 100Gbit/s and above rates, based on less-mode multiplexing or less-mode multiplexing combined with multi-core multiplexing, ultra-800Gbit/s, air core optical fiber transmission and other new technical solutions will continue to be the focus of future technology development and exploration of high-speed optical communication.
Differentiated networking methods coexist and develop
The small particle scheme needs to be co-promoted
As the bearing base of the new infrastructure, the networking mode of optical network still presents the trend of selecting transmission technology on demand for differentiated networking, and it is still difficult to unify the overall solution in the short term, but the gradual realization of all-optical networking is still the common expectation of the industry. At the trunk transmission level, the scale of the all-optical network based on the node structure of the reconfigurable optical distribution and multiplexing equipment (ROADM) node structure based on the single-channel 100 Gbit/s and above rate is expected to continue to expand, the node interconnection dimension will be improved as needed, and the optical layer control and maintenance capabilities will be further enhanced, and the mode of networking based on optical transmission network (OTN) electric cross node networking or OTN electric cross node combined with ROADM node hybrid networking will also coexist and develop; at the level of access, aggregation and core of metropolitan transmission network, OTN/ A variety of technologies such as WDM, sliced packet network (SPN)/radio access network IP bearer (IPRAN) will also be deployed on a large scale in different carrier networks.
At the same time, in the face of strong digital transformation needs in the industry, deterministic bearer has become a hot topic in the industry, the urgency of efficient collaboration between multi-level networks is highlighted, and the demand for high-performance and flexible small-particle bandwidth transmission technology is urgent. The industry is currently conducting research on the implementation of small particle transmission technology solutions around OTN, SPN and other main technologies, and there is no complete consensus on the typical small particle OTV technology solution based on optical service unit (OSU). At the plenary meeting of the ITU-T SG15 Group standard held in December 2021, the conference suspended the G.osu project on the grounds that the OSU technical standard has not made substantial progress in a specific cycle, and hoped to conduct in-depth discussions on the main needs of small particle transmission, the commonality and differences of OTN/SPN small particle broadband transmission mechanisms, etc., in order to further explore the direction of OSU standards and the choice of follow-up solutions.
Overall, for the unification and gradual application of small particle broadband transmission technology solutions, it will be realized in 2022 until the industry is promoted by the same direction.
The introduction of AI application scenarios is gradually clarified
The standardization of management and control integration has been gradually improved
The introduction of AI to strengthen the self-intelligence of communication networks has become a technology hotspot in the industry in recent years, as the bearing base of new infrastructure, optical networks also need to improve the attention to the application of AI characteristics, of which network optimization, control deployment, operation and maintenance support and other AI-oriented typical application scenarios are gradually clarified, related applications gradually carry out verification and deployment practices, research and development of AI-oriented optical network control architecture interface, intelligent grading specifications, data model standards, etc. has become a top priority.
According to the current preliminary discussion, it is expected that standards or alliance organizations such as CCSA, IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group 5G Bearer Working Group, NGOF Cloud and Private Line Bearer Working Group will coordinate with the whole chain of technology industry to carry out intelligent grading and evaluation research and standard specification formulation around network scenarios such as optical networks, 5G bearers, and cloud private lines.
In addition, the standardization of control and fusion based on the software-defined optical network (SDON) architecture will be accelerated, focusing on the further improvement of the north-south interface specification, and promoting the integration and unification of management, control, analysis and other control functions, of which the southbound interface mainly focuses on equipment or systems such as SPN, fronthaul WDM, and open WDM lines, and the northbound interface is mainly for network slicing for applications such as cloud leased lines.
Open decoupling is still under exploration and assessment
The popularity of photoelectric co-integration continues to increase
IT technology and CT technology learn from each other in the development and evolution and gradually coordinate and even integrate, the current typical model is cloud network integration, computing network integration and so on. In order to better cope with the new diversified and flexible needs such as cloud applications and computing power sharing, further stimulate the vitality of network application capabilities and industrial development, reduce networking costs and reconstruct core technology dominance, communication networks, under the impetus of relevant industrial organizations, gradually explore new model networking applications in an open and decoupled manner, and are still in the stage of partial primary exploration and verification.
Optical networks have also had preliminary application exploration in scenarios such as access-based OTON and DCI (data center interconnection), but considering the role of optical networks as the bearing base of new infrastructure, whether the application of more complex scenarios such as the transmission trunk layer and the metropolitan core layer has gradually promoted the open decoupling mechanism synchronously is to be further studied and evaluated by the industry in combination with security and reliability needs, supply and demand of the industrial chain, operation and maintenance support capabilities, scale test verification effects and comprehensive costs.
At the same time, as the key component of optical communication integration technology, III-V group integration and silicon optical integration and other photonic integration technologies are accelerating in parallel, of which the potential advantages of silicon optical integration are gradually highlighted, which has aroused great concern in the industry and actively increased the layout. In addition, with the improvement of the power of the electrical chip switching capacity and the gradual increase of the optical interface processing rate (800Gbit/s, 1.6Tbit/s and above, etc.), the photoelectric co-packaging (CPO) based on silicon optical technology has become a hot solution for ultra-high-speed photoelectric signal integration packaging, and at present, OIF, CCSA, IPEC and other standards or alliance organizations have carried out research, and the relevant institutions in the industry have continuously launched display products, and it is expected that the attention of photoelectric co-integration will continue to increase.
Overall, in the face of the demand for new infrastructure construction and the development trend of industrial digital transformation, optical networks will continue to accelerate innovation and development around the technical characteristics of ultra-high speed and ultra-large bandwidth, flexible and differentiated networking, intelligent control, open collaboration, high integration, and low cost.
At the same time, in the face of typical digital transformation application scenarios such as intelligent manufacturing, smart industries (medical, mining, education, etc.), and urban parks, combined with the advantages of optical networks such as large capacity, low latency, low energy consumption and high security, the industry will also actively explore and promote the innovative application of Gigabit optical networks. The first "Guanghua Cup" Gigabit Optical Network Application Innovation Competition being held by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology will further promote the benign development of the Gigabit Optical Network Technology Industry and the landing of innovative applications in multiple fields, and support the acceleration of the digital transformation of the industry.
Author of this article
Zhao Wenyu
Institute of Technology and Standards, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology
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