Proposal for an SDN-Like Innovative Metro-Access Optical Network Architecture

Today, telecommunication operators are facing an epochal challenge due to the need of higher reconfigurability, flexibility, and dynamicity for their networks. In the latest years, this necessity has been addressed by the introduction of Software-Defined Networking (SDN), mainly in the fields of data centers and core networks. The present work introduces a unified metro-access optical network architecture based on some features inspired by SDN models. The essential aim is to enable bandwidth shared among different passive optical networks (PONs) in order to achieve higher adaptability to increasingly migratory and volatile traffic patterns. Even if the present work is mainly focused on the architecture, several hints for specific implementation of the network nodes are detailed as well in order to demonstrate its feasibility. Several numerical simulations have been performed to assess the performance of the proposed solution both about physical effects and about quality of service. Bit error ratio degradation due to physical impairments has been evaluated and traffic congestion has been estimated in terms of burst loss probability and average throughput.