SDN and OpenFlow for Dynamic Flex-Grid Optical Access and Aggregation Networks

We propose and discuss the extension of software-defined networking (SDN) and OpenFlow principles to optical access/aggregation networks for dynamic flex-grid wavelength circuit creation. The first experimental demonstration of an OpenFlow 1.0-based flex-grid lambda-flow architecture for dynamic 150 Mb/s per-cell 4 G Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) mobile backhaul (MBH) overlays onto 10 Gb/s passive optical networks (PON) without optical network unit (ONU)-side optical filtering, amplification, or coherent detection, over 20 km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) with a 1: 64 passive split is also detailed. The proposed approach can be attractive for monetizing optical access/aggregation networks via on-demand support for high-speed, low latency, high quality of service (QoS) applications over legacy fiber infrastructure.