Time Shared Optical Network (TSON): a novel metro architecture for flexible multi-granular services

Time Shared Optical Network (TSON): A Programmable Network Edge Solution for Multi-Access Support

The time shared optical network (TSON) has been proposed as a dynamic optical transport network solution to provide high bandwidth and low latency connectivity in support of 5G technology and beyond. This work reviews the TSON evolution stages developed in the framework of the U.K. national project Towards Ultimate Convergence of All Networks (TOUCAN). The details of the TSON architecture and its various development phases are discussed, and the performance of its latest implementation is evaluated through relevant demonstration activities across the Smart Internet Lab’s 5G (5GUK) test network.

Programmable on-chip and off-chip network architecture on demand for flexible optical intra-datacenters

The paper presents a novel network architecture on demand approach using on-chip and-off chip implementations, enabling programmable, highly efficient and transparent networking, well suited for intra-datacenter communications. The implemented FPGA-based adaptable line-card with on-chip design along with an architecture on demand (AoD) based off-chip flexible switching node, deliver single chip dual L2-Packet/L1-time shared optical network (TSON) server Network Interface Cards (NIC) interconnected through transparent AoD based switch. It enables hitless adaptation between Ethernet over wavelength switched network (EoWSON), and TSON based sub-wavelength switching, providing flexible bitrates, while meeting strict bandwidth, QoS requirements. The on and off-chip performance results show high throughput (9.86Ethernet, 8.68Gbps TSON), high QoS, as well as hitless switch-over.

Demonstration of low latency Intra/Inter Data-Centre heterogeneous optical sub-wavelength network using extended GMPLS-PCE control-plane

This paper reports on the first user/application-driven multi-technology optical sub-wavelength network for intra/inter Data-Centre (DC) communications. Two DCs each with distinct sub-wavelength switching technologies, frame based synchronous TSON and packet based asynchronous OPST are interconnected by a WSON inter-DC communication. The intra/inter DC testbed demonstrates ultra-low latency (packet-delay <270 µs and packet-delay-variation (PDV)<10 µs) flexible data-rate traffic transfer by point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and multipoint-to-(multi)point connectivity, highly suitable for cloud based applications and high performance computing (HPC). The extended GMPLS-PCE-SLAE based control-plane enables innovative application-driven end-to-end sub-wavelength path setup and resource reservation across the multi technology data-plane, which has been assessed for as many as 25 concurrent requests.

High performance and flexible FPGA-based time shared optical network (TSON) metro node

The paper presents the architecture, implementation and evaluation of the flexible and finely granular Time Shared Optical Network (TSON) metro node. It focuses on the FPGA-based Layer 2 TSON metro node system. The experimentally measured results show exceptional performance of up to 8.68 Gbps throughput per 10 Gbps port, 95.38% of theoretical maximum throughput, latency of less than 160 μsec and jitter of less than 25 μsec. The TSON topology agnostic node/network also delivers differentiated QoS latency levels yet always guaranteed (contention-free) by deploying diverse time-slice allocation schemes.