Wireless heterogeneous networks (HetNets) are a cost- and an energy-efficient alternative to provide high capacity to end users in the future 5G communication systems. However, the transport segment of a radio access network (RAN) poses a big challenge in terms of cost and energy consumption. In fact, if not planned properly its resulting high cost might limit the benefits of using small cells and impact the revenues of mobile network operators. Therefore, it is essential to be able to properly assess the economic viability of different transport techonolgies as well as their impact on the cost and profitability of a HetNets deployment (i.e., RAN + transport).

This paper first presents a general and comprehensive techno-economic framework able to assess not only the total cost of ownership (TCO) but also the business viability of a HetNets deployment. It then applies it to the specific case study of a backhaul-based transport segment. In the evaluation work two technology options for the transport network are considered (i.e., microwave and fiber) assuming both a homogeneous (i.e., macro cells only) and a HetNet deployments. Our results demonstrate the importance of selecting the right technology and deployment strategy in order not to impact the economic benefits of a HetNet deployment. Moreover, the results also reveal that a deployment solution with the lowest TCO does not always lead to the highest profit.  

This paper reports on the architectural, protocol, physical layer, and integrated testbed demonstrations carried out by the DISCUS FP7 consortium in the area of access-metro network convergence. Our architecture modeling results show the vast potential for cost and power savings that node consolidation can bring. The architecture, however, also recognizes the limits of long-reach transmission for low-latency 5G services and proposes ways to address such shortcomings in future projects. The testbed results, which have been conducted end-toend, across access-metro and core, and have targeted all the layers of the network from the application down to the physical layer, show the practical feasibility of the concepts proposed in the project.

This paper deals with resource management in optical interconnection networks. It first proposes an optical resource management framework as a platform to develop and evaluate efficient solutions for multipoint-to-multipoint optical communication systems with a centralized controller. The paper then focuses on studying the optical resource scheduling (ORS) problem as a core element in the framework by applying the classical open-shop scheduling theory. The ORS problem can therefore be solved by adopting the existing preemptive and nonpreemptive open-shop scheduling algorithms. In an optical network with nonnegligible reconfiguration delay, a preemptive algorithm may incur high reconfiguration overhead resulting in worse performance compared to the nonpreemptive strategy. Motivated by this fact, this paper proposes an adaptive open-shop scheduling (AOS) algorithm that dynamically decides the optimal scheduling strategy according to traffic condition and system parameters, such as reconfiguration delay, nonpreemptive approximation ratio, and number of involved optical interfaces. The solution is assessed by means of an analytical model that allows to quantify the network performance in terms of packet delay and potential energy savings obtained by the sleep mode operation. As a possible application scenario, the inter- and intrarack optical interconnection networks in data centres are considered. Analytical results demonstrate how the proposed AOS outperforms the nonpreemptive and preemptive scheduling strategies for typical configurations used in data center networks. In addition, the reconfiguration delay and wake-up time of optical devices are identified as performance-determining factors.

This paper investigates, through simulations, the tradeoff between energy efficiency (EE) and the overall spectral efficiency (SE) of fiber optic links for a given capacity and a link length. The comparison is made for various modulation formats, span lengths, and with/without using forward error correction (FEC). The power consumption of the different system components is estimated from the data sheets of the state-of-the-art equipment. Results show that the use of long single-mode fiber spans (i.e., more than 40 km) improves EE when coherent modulation formats are used. However, with noncoherent formats, the span length must be selected depending on SE, aggregated traffic amount needs to be transmitted, and link length. For almost all modulation formats, FEC reduces the overall energy consumption despite being one of the main power consumers in fiber optic communication systems. The power consumption of 3Rs becomes particularly important when the linear crosstalk limits the system reach. In all other cases, the power consumption of transponders and optical line amplifiers is dominating, but their contribution changes depending on the aggregated traffic amount and system reach.

Although, wireless solutions continue to be a dominant enabling technology in the future backhaul  segment, they are susceptible to weather disturbances that may substantially degrade network throughput, or delay, compromising the 5G requirements.  These  effects  can  be  alleviated  by centralized rerouting realized by software defined networking (SDN) architecture. However, careless frequent reconfigurations may lead to inconsistencies in network states due to asynchrony between different switches, which may create  congestion and limit the gain of frequent rerouting.  In  this  paper, we focus on the rerouting process during rain disturbance considering the minimum total congestion imposed  during  the  update  of  routing  tables as a switching cost. At each time sample, the central controller has the possibility to adopt the optimal routes at a switching cost or to keep using previous routes at the expense of a throughput loss due to route sub- optimality. To find optimal solutions with minimal data loss in a static scenario, we formulate a dynamic programming problem that utilizes perfect knowledge of the rain attenuation for the whole rain period (off-line policy with full knowledge). For dynamic scenarios where the future rain attenuation data cannot be known, we propose an online consistency-aware rerouting algorithm, called optimal control action with prediction (OCAP), which uses the temporal correlation of rain fading to estimate the future rain attenuation. Simulation results on synthetic and real networks validate the efficiency of our OCAP algorithm, substantially reducing congestion and increasing network throughput with a fewer number of rerouting actions compared to benchmarks approaches.

High reliability performance of network is essential to minimize the possible network service interruption time, particularly in optical backbone networks where a large amount of data can be affected by a single failure. The existing studies on improvement of network reliability performance assume that failures of network devices are not related to the traffic load, which on the other hand, is not always true. For example, the lifetime of erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) depends on the number of amplified lightpaths passing through. Encouraged by this observation, in this paper, we investigate the impact of used routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithm on the number of failures in the network, and as a consequence on the network operational cost related to the failure reparation. We propose and evaluate a novel RWA approach, referred to as reliability performance aware RWA (RA-RWA), taking into account particular EDFA reliability performance characteristics with the goal of reducing the number of EDFA failures. The assessment results show that the operational cost related to EDFA failure reparation is impacted by the chosen RWA. The proposed RA-RWA provides 6% reduction, while other analyzed RWA algorithm, i.e., least loaded path (LLP), causes significant rise (up to 27%) of EDFA related failure reparation cost compared to the classical shortest path (SP) approach. In addition, RA-RWA offers further benefits in terms of reduced blocking probability compared to the SP. Concluding, we show that considering device reliability performance characteristics in RWA is important for the optical network operators as it can impact the network operational cost related to EDFA failure reparation.

High reliability performance of network is essential to minimize the possible network service interruption time, particularly in optical backbone networks where a large amount of data can be affected by a single failure. The existing studies on improvement of network reliability performance assume that failures of network devices are not related to the traffic load, which on the other hand, is not always true. For example, the lifetime of erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) depends on the number of amplified lightpaths passing through. Encouraged by this observation, in this paper, we investigate the impact of used routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithm on the number of failures in the network, and as a consequence on the network operational cost related to the failure reparation. We propose and evaluate a novel RWA approach, referred to as reliability performance aware RWA (RA-RWA), taking into account particular EDFA reliability performance characteristics with the goal of reducing the number of EDFA failures. The assessment results show that the operational cost related to EDFA failure reparation is impacted by the chosen RWA. The proposed RA-RWA provides 6% reduction, while other analyzed RWA algorithm, i.e., least loaded path (LLP), causes significant rise (up to 27%) of EDFA related failure reparation cost compared to the classical shortest path (SP) approach. In addition, RA-RWA offers further benefits in terms of reduced blocking probability compared to the SP. Concluding, we show that considering device reliability performance characteristics in RWA is important for the optical network operators as it can impact the network operational cost related to EDFA failure reparation.

A differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) based digital mobile fronthaul architecture is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By using a linear predictor in the DPCM encoding process, the quantization noise can be effectively suppressed and a prediction gain of 7 similar to 8 dB can be obtained. Experimental validation is carried out with a 20 km 15-Gbaud/lambda 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) intensity modulation and direct detection system. The results verify the feasibility of supporting 163, 122, 98, 81 20-MHz 4, 16, 64, 256 QAM based antenna-carrier (AxC) containers with only 3, 4, 5, 6 quantization bits at a sampling rate of 30.72MSa/s in LTE-A environment. Further increasing the number of quantization bits to 8 and 9, 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation (1024 QAM) and 4096 QAM transmission can be realized with error vector magnitude (EVM) lower than 1% and 0.5%, respectively. The supported number of AxCs in the proposed DPCM-based fronthaul is increased and the EVM is greatly reduced compared to the common public radio interface (CPRI) based fronthaul that uses pulse code modulation. Besides, the DPCM-based fronthaul is also experimentally demonstrated to support universal filtered multicarrier signal that is one candidate waveform for the 5th generation mobile systems.

Optical backbone operators need to meet the availability requirements specified in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). While less stringent availability constraints, i.e., less than three 9's might be met by provisioning connections without any protection, more stringent requirements, i.e., five 9' s, force operator to use proactive protection strategies. The connection provisioning process becomes more cost-efficient when green aspects are considered. On the other hand, energy awareness introduces thermal fatigue effects, which may in turn lower the lifetime of devices that undergo frequent power state transitions, i.e., between Active Mode (AM) and Sleep Mode (SM). As a result the availability level experienced by the unprotected connections may decrease. At the same time, with devices failing more frequently the protection level chosen for a given connection might not be enough to guarantee the required average connection availability performance. This work tackles the problem of managing an optical backbone network when green and thermal fatigue aspects are introduced. We propose an Energy and Fatigue Aware Heuristic (EFAH) that is able to balance between thermal fatigue effects and energy saving performance. When compared to the pure Energy-Aware (EA) strategies, EFAH manages to significantly improve the value of the average connection availability of both unprotected and protected connections. On the other hand, there is a price to pay in terms of lower energy saving performance.

Optical backbone operators need to meet the availability requirements specified in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs). While less stringent availability constraints, i.e., less than three 9's might be met by provisioning connections without any protection, more stringent requirements, i.e., five 9's, force operator to use proactive protection strategies. The connection provisioning process becomes more cost-efficient when green aspects are considered. On the other hand, energy awareness introduces thermal fatigue effects, which may in turn lower the lifetime of devices that undergo frequent power state transitions, i.e., between Active Mode (AM) and Sleep Mode (SM). As a result the availability level experienced by the unprotected connections may decrease. At the same time, with devices failing more frequently the protection level chosen for a given connection might not be enough to guarantee the required average connection availability performance. This work tackles the problem of managing an optical back-bone network when green and thermal fatigue aspects are introduced. We propose an Energy and Fatigue Aware Heuristic (EFAH) that is able to balance between thermal fatigue effects and energy saving performance. When compared to the pure Energy-Aware (EA) strategies, EFAH manages to significantly improve the value of the average connection availability of both unprotected and protected connections. On the other hand, there is a price to pay in terms of lower energy saving performance.