Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
ABSTRACT
How to transport the control and management information of optical networking is a major concern these days. We
compare several means and arrive at a conclusion that OSC (optical supervisory channel) is a better choice. The content
of OSC is given and OSC channel wavelength, bit rate and coding method are discussed. An OSC example of WDM
metro network, which demonstrates the processing operation of overheads in OSC, FDI behavior for three types of
failure, and Self-management of OSC subsystem, are illuminated. To fulfill the demand of intelligent and distributed
management of optical transport network, an OSC of OC-3 (155Mbps) channel bit rate may be needed in the near
future.
Keywords: OSC, OTN (Optical Transport Network), FDI, WDM metro ring.
1. INTRODUCTION
With the unprecedented growth in data traffic, demand for bandwidth is seemly limitless. Optical transport network
(OTN) is being adopted for this purpose. And optical networking technology has been developed to circumvent the data
rate bottleneck caused by the electronic device in OEO transition. To implement optical networking, some characteristic
information of OTN must be transported between network elements and sent to network management system. There are
various means to provide for these and are summarized in the table below.
Table 1 several methods
In-fiber
Separate network
In-band
Optical Channel
Out of band
The OSC is a separate channel, which carries overhead information for network management purposes. Management
messages for the OMS and OTS layers, together with management messages for the Och layer that are transported via a
channel non-associated implementation, may share an OSC1.
Comparing these methods, we can arrive at the conclusion that OSC is a better choice. The advantage of OSC can be
summarized as follows:
1. In the equipment without electronic interface, such as line optical amplifiers, the control and management
information of them cannot be sent with in-band method. That is why the OSC is presented.
2. OSC (Optical supervisory channel) is physically diverse from the associated data bearing channel. OSC s health is
independent from that of data bearing channel (that is optical channel). So when the data bearing channel fails, the
This paper is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China. The number is 69990540.
E_mail: liufengqing1975@263.net Tel: 86-21-62932166 Fax: 86-21-62820892.
Fiber Optic Components, Subsystems, and Systems for Telecommunications, Suning Tang,
Xiaomin Ren, Editors, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4604 (2001) 2001 SPIE 0277-786X/01/$15.00
195
3.
4.
control channel may still work and vice versa. For example, communications between nodes is possible if the
failure is specific to the OCH and not the entire fiber or a node.
Unlike DCN (Data Communication Network), OSC doesnt need a separate network. It can utilize the existing fiber
network. As OTN may transverse some place where there is no existing data networks, it is convenient to use OSC.
OSC can transport OTS and OMS overhead, so it has the inherent ability to carry common information of multiple
wavelength, even multiple links. This can reduce the information that needs to be communicated between nodes.
As more and more fibers and more available wavelengths in a fiber between adjacent nodes will be provisioned,
control and management issues will become complex and error-prone. OSC can make this simple and makes the
OTN more scalable. This is very useful for GMPLS, which extends MPLS to IP/WDM integrated network and
need implementing LSP hierarchy and link bundling for scalability2.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we will discuss the content of Optical Supervisory Channel and both
frame-based and message-based methods will be used. In section 3 an example of using OSC to manage WDM metro
network is given, which specifies how to process the OSC overhead and describes the scenario of FDI sending over the
OSC. In section 4, we mainly deal with the self-management of itself. Finally, we discuss the future trend of OSC,
which will eat up about 100Mbps bandwidth.
2. OSC contents
It has been agreed that OMS (Optical Multiplex Section) and OTS (Optical Transport Section) overhead are carried on
the Optical Supervisory Channel. Some Optical Channel overhead, such as optical channel trace, need to be associated
with Och. However, there are some locations where Och associated overhead are not available, but there are needs for
OMS terminations to perform an OCh maintenance function. Otherwise, there must be a standby transmitter to be
capable of generating an above-line-rate signal in order to create the byte that houses the OCh maintain information3. In
such an instance, 2.5 Gb/s capable transmitter would be necessary to send a 2 Mb/s signal. It is very expensive and low
cost-effective ratio.
In another view, OSC will need to carry several separate information streams, including control and management
information. Control information has low latency requirement, which includes the signaling for both data bearing
channel and OSC channel itself. Fault management information including FDI and APS is an example of it.
Management information is relative time insensitive information, which includes OMS, Och FTFL messages. OTS,
OMS DCC (Data communication channel) may be time-critical or time insensitive according to what are transferred in
it. Besides these information, there are OTS, OMS order wire bandwidth requirements and some other information.
According to information that belongs to different layers (OTS, OMS, Och) and used for data bearing channel or optical
supervisory channel, the contents of OSC can be depicted as figure 1. FDI/BDI is used to suppress the downstream or
upstream alarming messages in the corresponding layer, respectively. FTFL (Fault Type and Fault Location) messages
are used to determine the fault type and fault location of corresponding layer. Data communication channel has multiple
usages, which can be used to transport wavelength provision information, control information of the OXC and OADM,
even they can be used to download software between nodes. The overhead for OSC mainly includes
protection-switching signaling for OSC subsystem, the states and commands that OSC subsystem and network manager
want to exchange. There are also some bits that are reserved for national and carrier use.
There are two different means to transport these separate streams, frame-based and message-based. We use both, for
they have different advantages for different information. Fixed bit assignments of a frame are used to carry the low
latency information, which can be easily examined and has the advantage of low latency. An OSC of 2Mbps, using
PCM30/32 frame structure is used in our implementationof Metro ring. Message-based protocols, a simplified TCP/IP
196
protocol stacks, are used for those time insensitive information. A fixed amount of transport capacity in a frame is
reserved for the message-based protocol and variable contents can be defined in it. That is, some information will be
packaged and transported though the fixed amount of bandwidth, such as DCC.
OTS OH
OMS OH_P
OMS OH_S
OCH Reserved
OCH unassociated OH_S
OMS OH_P means OMS overhead for OMS payload. OMS OH_S means OMS overhead for OSC channel. So is for
other similar expression. OSC states and commands from network manager are defined in OMS DCC as a type of
message.
197
O/E
NE
Manager
E/O
NE
OSC controller
Add/Drop
module
Manager
OSC
Device
interface
controller
OW
1550/1510
Demultiplexer
1550/1510
Multiplexer
E/O
O/E
Data plane
(1550nm band)
(1510 nm band)
(C) Physically separation of OSC
subsystem and WDM optical network
OADM
OXC
Figure 2
OSC node structure and segregation of OSC network and WDM optical network
ADD
OTS OH OMS OH
OTS OH OMS OH
OTS/OMS
OTS/OMS
OH Rev.
OH Trans.
198
OADM
OTS_TT
OMS_TT
OTS_TT
OADM
a) Fiber cut
OMS FDI_S, OCHi
FTFL via OSC
OADM
Figure 4
via OSC
OTS_TT OTS_TT
OADM
OMS_TT OMS_TT
OADM
OTS_TT
OMS_TT
OTS_TT
OMS_TT
OADM
OMS FTFL
via OSC
OTS_TT
OMS_TT
OCHi channel
faiure
OCHi FTFL
Fiber cut
OTS_TT
OADM
OMS_TT
OADM OMS_TT
OSC channel
failure
OADM
OTS_TT
OMS_TT
199
another ring will be formed as soon as the failure is repaired. So these two nodes can detect signal of frame sync and
one of them will activate restoration back to the normal states.
Node 1
Node 1
E/O
O/E
O/E
E/O
E/O
O/E
work ring
work ring
E/O
O/E
protection ring
protection ring
Failure
Node 2
Node 3
Node 2
Node 3
O/E
E/O
O/E
E/O
O/E
E/O
O/E
E/O
E/O
O/E
E/O
O/E
E/O
O/E
E/O
O/E
b)
Topology
of
OSC
ring
after
normal conditions
Figure 5
REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.
200