SwiTching And tRansmission (STAR)

由于带宽增长了至少50到100倍，互联网功耗在过去十年中持续增加。由于带宽密集型应用的日益普及，预计未来3年带宽将进一步增长40%至300%。因此，鉴于明显的生态和经济驱动因素，能源效率日益成为信息和通信技术组织的一个关键优先事项。在该项目中，我们采用了核心交换和路由的GreenTouch节能目标，将节能系数提高到100倍，并且相信，如果该提案中的研究被证明是成功的，这一雄心勃勃的目标是可以实现的。核心网络中的一个关键观察结果是，大部分功率消耗在IP层，而相比之下，光传输和光交换的功率效率更高，这就是该项目的灵感所在。因此，我们将引入节能的最佳物理网络拓扑，以尽可能牺牲IP路由为代价，鼓励光传输和光交换。申请者的初步研究表明，网络中的物理拓扑选择有可能显著降低功耗，但网络优化以及大、低功率光子交换体系结构提供的流量和机会的考虑将导致进一步的节能。在本项目中，我们将研究一种大型高速光子交换机体系结构，将其功耗降至最低，并确定利用该交换机来最大限度地降低功耗的最佳网络物理拓扑。我们将设计新的大型光子交换结构，基于混合半导体光放大器(SOA)/马赫曾德尔干涉仪作为选通元件，以最大限度地减少每比特的交换能量，并计划利用这些新的交换体系结构来优化网络架构，并引入(光子)芯片功率监控，为更高层决策提供信息。网络目前通常被过度配置以维持服务质量。我们将研究最优的资源分配，以在保持服务质量的同时减少超额供应因素。目前，网络中通过分配冗余路径和资源来提供保护，对于完全保护，每条工作路径都有一条保护路径。我们将优化我们的网络，以最大限度地减少因保护而造成的电力损耗。最优的物理拓扑设计、最优的资源分配、光交换而不是IP路由、更高效的光子交换机和能效保护所节省的电能可以结合在一起，因此研究人员和他们的工业合作伙伴BT、Alcatel Lucent和Telekomunikacja Polska相信，通过这个项目可以在核心网络中实现100倍的节能，这将对核心光网络的设计和实施产生重大影响。

The Internet power consumption has continued to increase over the last decade as a result of a bandwidth growth of at least 50 to 100 times. Further bandwidth growth between 40% and 300% is predicted in the next 3 years as a result of the growing popularity of bandwidth intensive applications. Energy efficiency is therefore increasingly becoming a key priority for ICT organizations given the obvious ecological and economic drivers. In this project we adopt the GreenTouch energy saving target of a factor of a 100 for Core Switching and Routing and believe this ambitious target is achievable should the research in this proposal prove successful. A key observation in core networks is that most of the power is consumed in the IP layer while optical transmission and optical switching are power efficient in comparison, hence the inspiration for this project. Therefore we will introduce energy efficient optimum physical network topologies that encourage optical transmission and optical switching at the expense of IP routing whenever possible. Initial studies by the applicants show that physical topology choices in networks have the potential to significantly reduce the power consumption, however network optimization and the consideration of traffic and the opportunities afforded by large, low power photonic switch architectures will lead to further power savings. We will investigate a large, high speed photonic switch architecture in this project, minimize its power consumption and determine optimum network physical topologies that exploit this switch to minimize power consumption. We will design new large photonic switch fabrics, based on hybrid semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) / Mach Zehnder interferometers as gating elements to minimise the switching energy per bit, and plan to optimize the network architecture making use of these new switch architectures and introduce (photonic) chip power monitoring to inform higher layer decisions. Networks are typically over provisioned at present to maintain quality of service. We will study optimum resource allocation to reduce the overprovisioning factor while maintaining the quality of service. Protection is currently provided in networks through the allocation of redundant paths and resources, and for full protection there is a protection route for every working route. We will optimize our networks to minimize power wastage due to protection. The power savings due to optimum physical topology design, optimum resource allocation, optical switching instead of IP routing, more efficient photonic switches and energy efficient protection can be combined and therefore the investigators and their industrial collaborators BT, Alcatel Lucent and Telekomunikacja Polska, believe that an ambitious factor of 100 power saving in core networks can be realised through this project with significant potential for resulting impact on how core photonic networks are designed and implemented.