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WONDER: Wdm Optical Network DEmonstrator over Rings

OSATE: Optics in Switching Architecture: Theory and Experimentation

Dr. Roberto Gaudino, senior member

Ing. Alessandro Bianciotto, Ph.D., with Siemens from August 2006

Ing. Antonio La Porta, Ph.D. student

Ing. Alessandro Antonino, internship student

PRIN - Cofin 2003 and 2005

MIUR, Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research

 - first phase (WONDER): October 2003 - October 2005

 - second phase (OSAATE): January 2006- Dicember 2007

The second phase of the project, named "OSATE" is currently active, and it is a natural prosecution of the previous project. Official OSATE web site

Currently, all kinds of networks are evolving towards faster and more efficient data traffic transport architectures in response to the continuous growth of the internet. In the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) segment, data traffic is growing at a rate that could soon lead to a saturation of the actual Sonet/SDH and Gigabit Ethernet equipment relying on the electronic processing of the whole node's incoming traffic. This kind of equipment requires a considerable amount of processing power which doesn't seem to grow as fast as the data traffic do.

Next generation MANs require more processing to be done in the optical domain in order to relieve the electronics from the burden of processing all the traffic passing through the node. In the past years, a lot of research effort has been devoted to the topic of next generation optical networks: one of the most promising architectures, both from the performance and feasibility point of view, uses the so called "broadcast and select over WDM" principle.

double ring folded topology

Broadcast and select networks are arranged in a ring topology where each node receives packets on a given wavelength (which acts as the node's address) letting the packets on the other wavelengths pass through. The time is slotted and packets have to be inserted in an empty slot in order to avoid collisions with packets generated by the other nodes. Before transmitting a packet, a node must check if the current slot on the desired destination wavelength is free (carrier sense) and quickly tune the transmitter to modulate packet's data on that wavelength.

node architecture

The WONDER network implements a broadcast and select architecture and builds upon the experience accumulated by Turin's research groups during a previous project called RINGO (RING Optical network) financed by the italian ministry of university research and education (MIUR) in 2001. WONDER is based on a double ring folded topology to provide fault recovery from a single fiber cut between two nodes. The main optical path has been configured in order to have very low loss and to be free from channel filtering elements: as a consequence of this, the proposed network architecture is very scalable and groups of nodes can share the same wavelengths in reception. Each node offer multicast capabilities due to the particular implementation of the transmitter.

The project, at the end of 2006 is in a very active state. These are the completed tasks:

•  the final experimental architecure has been defined in all its details
•  all the optoelectronic subsystems have been designed, implemented, characterized and tested
•  most of the current work is focused on the node controller programming over FPGA, including in particular
  • physical layer interfacing with the optoelectronic subsystems
  • core network algoritms (MAC and queuing)
  • high-layer interfacing through the PCI bus with the workstation/PC
  • high level software drivers in a Linux environment

Some references on the previous works that led in 2003 to the beginning of the WONDER project

• RINGO: An Experimental WDM Optical Packet Network for Metro Applications (pdf, 709 kB)

  Carena A.; De Feo V.; Finochietto J.M.; Gaudino R.; Neri F.; Piglione C. and Poggiolini P.

  Accepted for publication on IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication, 2004.

• RINGO: A Demonstrator of WDM Optical Packet Network on a Ring Topology (zip, 527 kB)

  Carena A.; De Feo V.; Ferrero V.; Gaudino R.; Neri F. and Poggiolini P.

  Optical Network Design and Modeling Working Conference, 4 - 6 Feb. 2002

• RINGO: A WDM Ring Optical Network Demonstrator (pdf, 437 kB)

  Carena A.; De Feo V.; Ferrero V.; Gaudino R.; Gigante P.; Neri F.; Poggiolini P. and Pozzi A.

  Optical Communication, 2001. ECOC '01. Vol 4, 30 Sept. - 4 Oct. 2001

• A summary of the HORNET project: A next generation Metropolitan Area Network

  Ian M. White; Matthew S. Rogge; Kapil Shrikhande and Leonid G. Kazovsky

  IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 21, No. 9, Nov. 2003

The current full list of publications on WONDER, with regards to only those papers written by the OPTCOM group

1)     Carena, V. De Feo, J. Finochietto, R. Gaudino, F. Neri, C. Piglione, P. Poggiolini, "RingO: An Experimental WDM Optical Packet Network for Metro Applications", Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on , Volume: 22 , Issue: 8 , Oct. 2004, Pages:1561 - 1571

2)     Bianciotto, A. Carena, V. Ferrero and  R Gaudino, "EDFA gain transients: experimental demonstration of a low cost electronic control", IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, vol. 15 , n. 10 , pp. 1351-1353, Oct. 2003. 

3)     Bianciotto, J. Finochietto, R. Gaudino, F. Neri, C. Piglione, A. Samperi, “Fast and efficient fault-recovery strategies in the WONDER metro architecture”, 10th European Conference on Networks & Optical Communications, London, UK, July 2005. 

4)     R. Gaudino, "The physical layer in the WONDER project: toward simplified solutions for packet-based optical networks", invited paper, 10th European Conference on Networks & Optical Communications, London, UK, July 2005. 

5)     A. Vannucci, M. Salsi, A. Bononi, A. La Porta, A. Bianciotto, R. Gaudino, "Theoretical and experimental investigation of low-cost optical amplification for packet-switched WDM metro networks", 10th European Conference on Networks & Optical Communications, London, UK, July 2005.

6)     Bianciotto, A. Carena, V. De Feo, J. Finochietto, R. Gaudino, F. Neri, C. Piglione and P. Poggiolini, “Experimental WDM Packet Networks for Metro Applications: the RingO and Wonder Projects", 9th European Conference on Networks & Optical Communications, NOC 2004, Invited Paper, June 29– July 1, 2004, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

7)     Bianciotto and R. Gaudino, "WONDER: overview of a packet-switched MAN architecture", OpNeTec 2004, Pisa 

8)     Bianciotto, V. Ferrero, R. Gaudino, A. La Porta, "Ricevitori ottici burst-mode per reti ottiche a pacchetto di futura generazione", Atti di FOTONICA 2005, Trani,  Italy, June 2005.

9)     Bianciotto, V. Ferrero, R. Gaudino, A. La Porta, F. Neri "Il progetto WONDER al Politecnico di Torino", Atti di FOTONICA 2005, Trani,  Italy, June 2005. 

10)  Stefano Bregni , Diego Carzaniga, R. Gaudino “ Slot Synchronization Strategies in Optical Slotted Rings: the WONDER approach”, ICC 2006,  Istanbul, Turkey, 11-15 June 2006

Moreover, the WONDER project was presented by R. Gaudino to the E-PhotonOne 2005 Summer School in Pisa:

• R. Gaudino, "Fundamental physical limitations in advanced-all optical networks: learning from the WONDER project". pdf presentation

Realization of the data transmitter subsystem over three wavelengths. Different options for packet generation are currently under investigation.

Realization of a full network demonstrator with three nodes exchanging data at 2.5 Gb/s per wavelength. Each node should implement the entire network protocol stack from the physical layer up to the application layer, where web browsing, ftp and e-mail should be available under the linux operating system environment. The network should recover from a failure (single fiber cut between two nodes) in the shortest time possible.

Partners:

Telecommunication Networks Group, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

Microelectronics Group, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

Telecommunication Networks Group, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Telecommunications Group, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

Here you can find links to some material used in the development of the wonder project divided by category:

• datasheets

• application notes

• devices characterizations