The increase in our society's dependence on information will push the existing information technology (IT) infrastructure beyond its capability. The actual fibers can handle the load for at least a decade more; the bottleneck is the network nodes, i.e., the electronic switches and routers. Even as there is a general consensus that opto-electronic (O-E) regeneration within the network is unavoidable at national and continental network scales, there is a push to limit such O-E regeneration. Optical transport and switching provide the advantage of transparency to protocols, bit-rates, modulation formats, etc., thus enabling a smoother evolution path for an infrastructure that will undoubtedly grow from its initially deployed framework. Transparency introduces a design issue that is not well studied or understood at this point, namely, the strong interaction between the physical and higher layers. The problem calls for cross-layer design approaches, which are standard in the wireless community but are largely unexplored in the optical community. This proposal seeks to advance the knowledge in this critical area by bringing together two PIs with very complementary expertise. The proposed effort is to design and analyze fiber transport network management systems for networks that use the more powerful but problematic all-optical switches. The approach is a holistic one, incorporating the degradations in the fibers and switches, and optimizing the dynamic allocation of resources.
The research plan includes two major tasks. The first is the optimization of the network management system, which is tackled through power, routing, and wavelength assignment for optical circuits. The second effort is to design the physical network considering the impact the network components and parameters have on the physical layer performance. Real data on large optical switches are available to the PIs and will be used to test and validate the performance predictions and new algorithms.
The results of the research affect every aspect of our society that depends on the ever-increasing need for information. It encourages the development of applications that require significant bandwidth. It empowers industry to purchase and control their networking links, thus giving them more bandwidth at a more affordable price. It also stimulates cross-fertilization of ideas from the two fields of networking and communications.
Broader Impact: The research enhances the education of the graduate and undergraduate students participating in it. Students from diverse backgrounds are sought. The PIs have a history of selecting students from a broad pool to provide a diverse research environment for the whole group. Research is integrated into undergraduate education via senior thesis projects. The research results will also be incorporated in graduate classes that the PIs teach on optical networking and communications. This will ensure a steady stream of researchers and engineers well versed in cross-layer design issues.
