Towards efficient, reliable and autonomous optical networks: the ORCHESTRA solution

Optical networks are designed to be operated statically. Connections are overprovisioned so that they remain uninterrupted over several (e.g. 10-15) years, using high physical layer margins to cover the evolution of the physical conditions and uncertainties. To increase the efficiency of the network, we first need to be able to observe it. As a first step we can increase the efficiency without seemingly sacrificing network reliability by removing uncertainties and reducing long term margins, observing and re-fueling them at intermediate periods. This requires certain automation steps in monitoring and data processing. Increasing further the efficiency, reducing further the margins, comes at a tradeoff in reliability which should be done according to service classes and requires higher automation. The ORCHESTRA network makes use of the coherent optical transceivers as software defined optical performance monitors (soft-OPM) to increase the optical network observability. ORCHESTRA developed state-of-the-art and novel digital signal processing (DSP) OPM algorithms and a novel hierarchical monitoring plane to carry and process physical layer monitoring data. ORCHESTRA uses data analytics methods to understand the physical conditions, and feed cross-layer optimization algorithms. ORCHESTRA closes and automates the observe-decide-act control loop, providing the mechanism to tradeoff efficiency for reliability