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Copyright ©2015 Polatis. All Rights Reserved

Software defined optical cross-connects

for smart city networks

- challenges & opportunities

Nick Parsons

7th July 2015

BIO/ONF workshop July 2015 2

Copyright ©2015 Polatis

Company

• Privately-held SME based in Cambridge, UK, Boston, USA and Krakow, Poland

• Bringing the fiber layer under software control since 2003

• Delivering industry-leading all-optical matrix switches to over 200 customers worldwide

• More than 2.5 billion port-hours accumulated on systems in-service

• Robust, reliable solutions for demanding applications

Technology

• Transparent Directlight® dark fibre all-optical circuit switch platform

• SDN-enabled dynamic fibre cross-connects scale from 4x4 to 192x192 ports

• Best in class performance – less than 1dB typical optical loss

• Substantially more energy-efficient than conventional OEO equipment

• 23 patents granted, 5 pending

Solutions

• High performance provisioning & protection for telecom and data center networks

• Secure optical communications for government and defense

• Test system automation for optical network equipment manufacturers

• UHD digital video broadcast distribution

• Oil and Gas sensor networks

About Polatis

BIO/ONF workshop July 2015 3

Copyright ©2015 Polatis

Bristol is Open Dark Fibre Connectivity

• Rich dark fibre network uses Polatis

192x192 optical cross-connects for

dynamic low latency connectivity between

wireless hubs, compute, creative and

operational nodes

• Polatis SDN-enabled optical circuit

switches allow automated fibre-layer

provisioning, protection, monitoring &

levelling at network nodes

• On-demand physical layer resource

scheduling and slicing between multiple

users

• External connectivity via Janet Aurora 2

national dark fibre infrastructure service

Big data mining 3D UHD Visualisation

Sensor networks5G wireless fronthaul

BIO/ONF workshop July 2015 4

Copyright ©2015 Polatis

DISCUS node 2Business

Backup OLT

Optical Distribution Network

1st stage splitting

2nd stage splitting

…

…

3rd stage splitting

…

PrimaryOLT

Protected, dual-homed feeder fiber OLT backplane

…

ONU

ONU

ONU

…

RE

RE

…

Residence

ONU

ONU

Mobile BS

ONU

ONU

wir

eles

spr

otec

tion

Mobile BS

REOptical switch

:Grid or grid-lessWavelength De/Multiplexer

:Protection fiber

:Working fiber

: Splitter

: Reach Extender

Electronic switch

DISCUS node

DISCUS node 1

Backup OLT

PrimaryOLT

OLT backplane

…

Optical switch

Electronic switch

DISCUS node

RE

RE

Customer end protectionwith disjoint fibre route

BS: Base StationONU: Optical Network UnitOLT: Optical Line Terminal

Core Network

~100km fiber reach

512 split/LR-PON

EU FP7 DISCUS: flat optical transport networks

• End-to-end network architecture using LR-PONs directly connected to a flat optical core

• Dimensioned to scale economically under sustained user bandwidth growth of >1000x

• Targeted order of magnitude reduction in network cost and energy consumption wrt BAU

• SDN metro-core node with optical switch fabric enables architecture on demand provisioning

Payne et al, DISCUS

BIO/ONF workshop July 2015 5

Copyright ©2015 Polatis

Smart city networks: some challenges…

• Complexity

o Great diversity of traffic demands

o Tidal flows of data usage across

metro area

o Creating user perception of infinite

bandwidth

• Integration

o Vision requires close integration of

many network technologies

o Needs open frameworks and

partnerships to benefit from SME

innovations

• Resilience

o Making a smart city network both

open and secure

Image: ITV

BIO/ONF workshop July 2015 6

Copyright ©2015 Polatis

…and opportunities• Dynamic provisioning of dark fibre circuits

o Outside broadcast streams at major events

o Collaborative UHD video production

o Ultra-low latency Inter-datacentre/HPC/storage

connectivity

• 5G fibre/wireless network integration

o CPRI wireless fronthaul bandwidths from

baseband unit pool can range up to several

100 Gb/s

o Optical cross-connects can help allocation of

BBU cloud resources to areas of peak demand

in radio access network

o All-optical switch data latency is <20ns with

zero delay jitter – no impact on fronthaul timing

o Longer term potential for direct RF over fibre

links to distributed antennas

UEBBU cluster

RRH

C-RAN

OXC

Images: Sky, Pfeiffer, OFC 2015; Raack, Atesio

www.polatis.com

@polatisnetworks

Copyright ©2015 Polatis. All Rights Reserved

Thank You

www.polatis.com

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