| Introduction |  |
The big growth of Internet applications has created the need to increase the backbone capacity and the access technologies to transport huge volumes of information. Currently the most efficient mean to increase the transmission capacity of the optical fibre telecommunication systems is to use Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology or CoarseWDM (CWDM) for the metro. These technology are already prepared to increase two orders of magnitude the fibre transport bandwidth.
In order to try to solve actual drawbacks in the Optical Networks, the UPC leaders the project CARISMA (Conexión y acceso a red Iri2 mediante anillo óptico multicanal), which aims to realize a test-bed of a new generation of all-optical networks, not present nowadays. This project has began during the year 2002 and will finish by the 2004
| Key features of CARISMA | |
The key goal of the project is to design and implement an intelligent and dynamic DWDM switching all-optical network architecture. This network will be able to provide Bandwidth/Wavelength on Demand with QoS between the different nodes and the IP clients. The network architecture is based on the ASON (Automatically Switching Optical Networks) standard, with intelligent optical cross-connect (OXC) for routing and switching, and optical add-drop nodes. The optical devices will integrate tunable lasers, controlled initially by the Network Manager and later dynamically by the control plane. Thus, the control plane of the network, responsible for setting up, releasing and restoring a connection will be developed under the policies of the GMPLS. The management plane, initially used for establishing the connections and for monitoring all the network topology and equipment status will be implemented with the HP Openview management software.
This Project will have three parts, following the ASON architecture:
| WDM | |
WDM technology in a first deployment stage simply provided high capacity point-to-point channels. Nowadays it is evolving to an all-optical connectivity technology using Optical Cross-connects nodes (OXC) for routing and switching, and Optical Add-Drop nodes (OADM) to insert and extract optical carriers. Hence, transparent transport networks to bit rate, format and protocol become feasible. The future optical network proposal pretends the withdrawal of layers such as ATM and SDH, and to provide direct interfaces for IP (encapsulated in GigabiEthernet) over WDM, which are currently being debated in the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF). WDM-TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) networks, using OXC's and OADM's, with temporal assignment to the optical channels will represent an intermediate step toward the more complex optical packet switching networks.
| Network topology | |
In this R+D Project it is envisaged to build and evaluate a high performance WDM (and in a second step CWDM) network using real traffic. Thus, in the near future, it will become a model for the connection and access to the 'Red Iris 2', through an optical WDM ring (CARISMA). The CARISMA network will be implemented in a dual ring of optical fibres (working fibre and protection fibre) to which three optical nodes with OADM capability will be connected. Each OADM will be able to insert, using tunable lasers, up to 4 WDM channels and extract up to 4 channels out of 12 which are available in the ring, the goal is to offer Wavelength/Bandwidth on Demand to Optical Nodes. Each WDM channel will be transparent up to 2.5 Gb/s, and at least three of them will be transparent up to 10 Gb/s. The three optical nodes that will generate a high volume of multimedia traffic, will be sited in the North Campus of the UPC (CCABA), in the UPC Campus of Terrassa, and in Televisió de Catalunya (TVC) in Sant Joan Despí (Barcelona). The first node will be connected to Internet 2 network of Catalonia (I2CAT). The total fibre length of this ring will be longer than 100 km. To perform the field trial using an OXC, the C.CABA node will be subdivided in two creating a new ring with these two nodes. Therefore, this new ring will be connected to the former ring with the OXC node that is a common node of both rings. This OXC will be designed and fabricated within this Project. The nodes will also have the capability of transmitting and receiving high quality (broadcast) digital video (CCIR 601) on WDM. TVC will create a big digital library of fixed and moving images to have disposal of a great amount of multimedia traffic. The connection to the experimental I2CAT network will also ensure a big volume of real traffic into the CARISMA network.
| Measurements | |
Among others, some tests to be realized within the CARISMA Project will be to generate, model, measure and evaluate the Quality of Service of IP/SDH/WDM, SDH/WDM, and IP/GigabitEthernet/WDM traffic. Moreover, there will be experiences in uncompressed high quality video and audio transmission for distributed multimedia production, distributed TV studios, virtual classrooms, teleconferences, etc. Another important aspect to be developed within this Project will be the Management System of the WDM network, which uses intelligent OADM and OXC nodes, integrating functionality such as routing, configuration, failures and performance, compliant with the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) framework. In particular, the integrated management system will include the network element layer, network element management layer, and network management layer. Therefore, for the management system, it will be necessary to cover the study of the network elements and the production of the requirements/specifications for the management system. It will also be necessary to develop the node agents and the mediation devices. All these systems will have to be integrated. The implementation of the management system will require the development of monitoring system and a WDM optical carriers stabilization system.
| Participants | |
Finally, the CARISMA Project, in which will participate two Universities (UPC and UPV) and two companies (TVC and TECSIDEL), will introduce, integrate and evaluate DWDM and CWDM optical technology using the new generation IP architecture, extending the experiment to the I2CAT platform, for its possible application to the connection and access to the Red Iris 2.