CAREER: Towards an All-Optical Network Infrastructure: Interconnection of Photonic WDM Broadcast-and-Select Local Area Networks

本提案中概述的职业发展计划侧重于首席研究员的研究和教学目标的整合。该研究项目解决了光网络设计和互连中的一些重要问题。这项工作的最终目标是为无缝的全国全光网络基础设施开发可行的解决方案。教育部分包括开发全光网络和互联网络架构与协议的研究生水平课程，将光波技术主题整合到现有的研究生和本科生入门网络课程中，并让本科生积极参与网络项目。在使用波分复用（WDM）的全光网络中，信息作为光信号在从源到目的的整个路径中传输。通过使用多个并发信道，每个信道在不同的波长上，WDM有潜力利用光纤的巨大信息承载能力，并提供比目前可能的高几个数量级的总吞吐量。鉴于光纤的安装基础和光组件技术的成熟，目前的网络技术最终将向全光基础设施发展。这种基础设施的部署将满足新兴的带宽密集型应用程序的需求。然而，大规模的光网络互连提出了一些基本和具有挑战性的问题，需要新颖和创新的解决方案。作为其职业发展计划的一部分，首席研究员建议解决这些问题，包括广播和选择WDM网络中的多址访问，单播和多播流量调度，光子局域网的互连，波长路由骨干网的架构问题，分布式控制，以及与子网和骨干网协议之间的交互相关的问题。我们的工作有望进一步加深我们对光网络特性的理解，并为如何克服该技术的一些局限性提供见解。目标是生成一个分析框架，使评估可选的体系结构和协议成为可能。

The career development plan outlined in this proposal focuses on the integration of the research and teaching objectives of the principal investigator. The research project addresses a number of important issues in the design and interconnection of optical networks. The ultimate goal of the proposed work is to develop viable solutions for a seamless nationwide all-optical network infrastructure. The educational component includes development of graduate-level courses on all-optical networking and on internetwork architectures and protocols, integration of topics on lightwave technology in existing graduate and undergraduate introductory network courses, and active involvement of undergraduate students in network projects. In an all-optical network using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), information is transmitted as optical signals throughout the path from source to destination. By using multiple concurrent channels, each on a different wavelength, WDM has the potential to exploit the enormous information-carrying capacity of fiber and deliver an aggregate throughput that is several orders of magnitude higher than it is possible today. Given the installed base of optical fiber, and the maturing of optical component technologies, it appears that current network technologies will eventually evolve to an all-optical infrastructure. The deployment of such an infrastructure will cater to the needs of emerging bandwidth-intensive applications. However, large scale interconnection of optical networks raises a number of fundamental and challenging problems that require novel and innovative solutions. As part of his career development plan, the principal investigator proposes to address a number of these issues, including multiple access in broadcast-and-select WDM networks, traffic scheduling of unicast and multicast traffic, interconnection of photonic local area networks, architectural issues in wavelength routed backbone networks, dist ributed control, and issues related to the interaction among subnetwork and backbone protocols. Our work is expected to further our understanding of the characteristics of optical networks, and to provide insight on how to overcome some of the limitations of the technology. The objective is to produce an analytical framework that will make it possible to evaluate alternative architectures and protocols.