Flexible Optical Networks

The evolution of optical networks is mainly driven by the demands resulting from altering usage of information technology by the people, increased information security and network reliability taking into account prize targets for decreased cost per transported bit. Increase of the number of internet user together with a shift from fixed connection to fixed and mobile connectivity accompanied with dramatic increase of mobile data traffic is observed. Induced by web services like shopping, gaming, video streaming, youtube, social networking, cloud computing and others this trend is sustained or even accelerated. Upcoming of new services will put additional pressure on the bandwidth requirements and the performance of current optical networks. A powerful, reliable and flexible optical infrastructure is considered to be prerequisite to enable the services of the future. An increase of the transmission capacity of the optical transport network is needed as well as a higher flexibility of the network to adapt to fluctuating information flows. To cope with this challenges arising from the network an increase of research and development effort and lots of innovations are essential. The Article is written for submission to NET, a German Journal, and has finally to be submitted in german language.