[Shenzhen, China, November 15, 2021] At the eighth Huawei Optical Innovation Forum, Victor Zhou, President of Huawei's Optical Transmission Network Domain, shared with global operators the concept of building all-optical target networks and introduced innovative solutions from Huawei that help make this possible.
As all-optical connections are becoming the foundation of the future digital world, Mr. Zhou suggested that building an all-optical target network with "Five Ones" enables high-quality connections, helping operators reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and stimulate new services.
High-Quality Connections Are Essential in the Digital Era, and All-Optical Target Networks Are Inevitable
The global digital era is coming. In China alone, 500 cities have proposed to build, or are already building smart cities. Smart city construction, however, is no simple task, involving complex technologies — such as cloud computing, big data, and all-optical connections — to achieve a digital government, digital economy, and digital society. Major cities in the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, have taken the lead in building all-optical smart cities, aiming to deploy two to four optical transport network (OTN) sites for every 10,000 people as a key indicator of city digitalization.
Elsewhere, the European Union (EU) has released its Digital Compass, a guideline for the digital development of the region throughout the next decade. This guideline outlines a clear aim to achieve the connectivity of everything, anytime and anywhere, with three distinct digitalization measures.
·Better public services: By 2030, all key public services, such as healthcare and education, will be available online.
·Better businesses and enterprises: By 2030, three quarters of companies will use cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI) services.
·Better application experiences: By 2030, everyone in the EU will enjoy gigabit connections to support the development of new services, such as the metaverse.
Such innovative applications in the digital era require high-quality connections, end-to-end (E2E) gigabit bandwidth, low latency of less than 10 ms, and high availability of 99.999%. Looking backward and forward, optical networks have always been recognized in the industry as high-quality connection technologies with unparalleled advantages, from ultra-high bandwidth and ultra-low latency to ultra-long lifecycles and energy saving capabilities. And with the digital era requiring such high-quality connections, only an E2E all-optical target network is fit for the task.
Building a "Five Ones" All-Optical Target Network Enables High-Quality Connections, Reduces TCO, and Stimulates New Services
What makes all-optical target network construction possible? Victor Zhou summarized the methods into "Five Ones."
·One-kilometer access: Extend the OTN edge to be within 1 km of users, reducing the TCO of fiber deployment and shortening the time to market (TTM) of services.
·One-stop all-optical access: Deploy edge OTNs at wireless and optical line termination (OLT) sites to provide all-service access and differentiated Service Level Agreements (SLAs), creating more possibilities.
·One-network all-optical slicing: Deploy E2E OTN + optical cross-connect (OXC) to implement all-optical slicing of 2M to 100G services, physically isolating services and enabling one network for multiple purposes.
·One-hop connection architecture: Build an integrated all-optical backbone network and an all-optical metro network, enabling one-hop connection to the cloud and deterministic millisecond-level latency.
·One-click smart operation: Deploy all-optical intelligent management and control to provide automatic planning and operations and maintenance (O&M), supporting the evolution toward all-optical autonomous driving.
Building an all-optical target network increases per-bit revenue through high-quality 2B, 2H, and 2C services, reducing the per-bit cost by maximizing fiber capacity and expanding capacity on demand. In addition, an all-optical target network supports 20-year service development without the need for architecture change, reducing long-term TCO.
All-Optical 3D-Mesh Backbone Networks Use a Larger Single-Fiber Capacity to Reduce Per-Bit TCO
Backbone network development is always driven by industry technologies. Providing a larger single-fiber capacity is an effective way to reduce per-bit TCO, which includes increasing the single-wavelength rate, number of channels, and transmission distance. Huawei continues to lead the industry across all backbone network development scenarios.
A good example is 400G application on a backbone network. Huawei's 400G solution improves spectrum efficiency to over 12% higher than the industry average. Huawei's solution requires only 100 GHz channel spacing, while other solutions in the industry require 112 GHz or higher. Expanding optical fiber spectrums with the Super C + L band technology, Huawei's 400G solution achieves a single-fiber capacity of up to 48 Tbit/s, over 40% higher than the industry average.
All-Optical Metro Networks Use a Simplified One-Hop Connection Architecture to Achieve Optimal TCO of the Entire Network and Support the Development of New Services
As 5G, fiber to the home (FTTH), and premium private line services develop rapidly, Mr. Zhou noted that it is increasingly important to build a fixed, mobile, and enterprise convergence (FMEC) bearer network. An all-optical target network implements the simplified architecture of one-hop connection to the cloud, reduces TCO, and supports the fast provisioning of new services in FMEC scenarios.
As for metro scenarios, Mr. Zhou encouraged operators to deploy OTN at the metro edge, to build an E2E OTN + OXC network.
·Deploying OTN at the metro edge greatly reduces TCO of the entire network, because it provides all-service access and all-scenario deployment and saves a large number of optical fibers. Huawei's edge OTN devices feature large capacities, small sizes, and low power consumption, meaning they can be installed on poles or in street cabinets to further reduce TCO.
·End-to-end OXC deployment simplifies site configuration and reduces latency. Huawei OXC uses the industry-leading optical backplane technology to slash more than 90% of intra-site fiber connections, thereby reducing more than 30% of network faults and saving significant space in the equipment room. Additionally, it supports automatic optical-layer commissioning, greatly reducing O&M costs.
·E2E OTN deployment supports the development of new services and the smooth migration of legacy synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) devices. Huawei's Liquid OTN solution — offering flexible optical service unit (OSU) hard pipes of 2M to 100G — is fully compatible with common OTN and MS-OTN networks, supporting SDH services such as E1 and STM-1/4/16/64. This solution helps operators save a large amount of space in their equipment rooms and cut electricity fees and fiber deployment costs.
OTN Premium Private Lines Are Trending in the Business Cycle and Will Be Diversified across Industries in the Future
E2E OTN networks support a variety of SLA monetization methods, such as improving bandwidth, latency, reliability, and TTM, in turn helping operators develop high-quality private lines. To date, Huawei has helped more than 90 operators around the world develop OTN premium private lines. And with each network providing extensive business benefits, the return on investment (ROI) period is generally less than two years.
Currently, OTN premium private lines predominantly serve industry enterprises working in finance, media, and over the top (OTT). In the future, however, their use will expand across sectors to include education, healthcare, and manufacturing.
Huawei provides diversified OTN premium private line solutions to help operators achieve success in the high-value 2B market.
·The OTN ring network or OTN point-to-point (P2P) solution can be used to provide high-quality E2E optical connections for governments, financial institutions, and OTT providers.
·For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in commercial buildings and campuses, private line requirements are also upgraded from basic Internet access to premium network access with cloudification. Huawei launched the OTN point-to-multipoint (P2MP) private line solution, which deploys OTN at OLT sites, to integrate the high-quality capabilities of OTN and the wide coverage of PON, in order to build differentiated products and services to the highest possible standard. Currently, multiple operators in China have already started to deploy OTN P2MP private line networks.
·Huawei also provides professional network planning services for private line deployment, to implement precise OTN coverage for high-value users and greatly reduce the TTM of private lines.
At the close of 2021's Huawei Optical Innovation Forum, Mr. Zhou concluded by saying that Huawei will continue to work with global operators and build "Five Ones" all-optical target networks to facilitate the digital transformation of various industries and seize opportunities in the digital era.