Optical Add-Drop Multiplexers (OADM)

Timothy Hahn

Montana State University EE 543 Advanced Telecommunication Fundamentals December 12, 2007

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Table of Contents
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Optical Switching ................................................................................................................................... 3 NSF Network.......................................................................................................................................... 5 Commercial Products ............................................................................................................................ 6 Simulation Design .................................................................................................................................. 7 Simulation Results ................................................................................................................................. 9 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 14

References................................................................................................................................................... 14

Table of Figures
Figure 1: Sample OADM [9] ........................................................................................................................... 5 Figure 2: NSFNet Topology [3] ...................................................................................................................... 6 Figure 3: Performance with Various Switch Times ..................................................................................... 10 Figure 4: Performance with Various Numbers of OADMs .......................................................................... 11 Figure 5: Performance Against Optimal Placement of OADMS in Delay .................................................... 12 Figure 6: Performance Against Optimal Placement of OADMS in Percentage ........................................... 12

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1. Introduction
Optical networking technology has been used to meet the ever increasing demand for network traffic. The network hardware has been improving along with the bit rates. Optical add-drop multiplexers (OADMs) are an emerging technology that can be used to reduce the number of conversions between the electrical and optical domains and frame processing time, thus decreasing the delay of the network. This paper examines the effect that OADMs have upon end-to-end network delay using the NSFNet as a test network topology. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: the following section presents an overview on Switching. Section 3 gives a short history of the NSFNet followed by a brief comparison of commercially available OADMs. The next two sections present the Simulation Design and Simulation Results. Conclusions are presented in Section 7. The final section contains the References.

2. Optical Switching
Metcalfes Law states that the utility of a network grows proportionally to the square of the number of users (n2) connected to it. [8] Unfortunately, as the number of users in a network increases, the complexity and expense of the network also increases. A mesh topology where each user is connected to every other user is not practical for networks of reasonable size. This leads to two competing goals of network design. One goal is, in general, to allow communication between all network users to maximize Metcalfes Law. The other goal is that networks must be economical; otherwise no one would use them. Network switches were

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developed to meet these competing goals of wide open network communication and network economy. Switching in the electric domain is relatively straightforward. Network frames typically contain a header that contains the source and destination of the frame. As switching is usually done at level 2 of the OSI model, the address is usually a MAC address. The switch reads the destination address and forwards the frame to the appropriate port on the switch based upon internal address tables. Switching in the optical domain is not nearly as easy. The simplest approach is to use a series of conversions. Optical signals are generally switched by first converting the optical signal into an electric signal. The correct output address is determined by the frame header. A second conversion, this time electrical to optical is then applied to the signal before it is sent out on the correct port. This is expensive; the extra conversions and processing introduces delay and raise the cost of the switch. None-the-less, this is probably the most commonly used method of switching used today. Another approach is to keep the signal in the optical domain as it is being switched. This topic has been widely researched for three decades, yet pure optical switches are still not widely used. In general, they are static and inflexible. The topic of optical switches is discussed in detail in [2]. A third approach (for WDM networks) is to use optical add-drop multiplexers (OADMs). An OADM takes a multi-wavelength signal arriving in an input fiber, drops one or more preselected wavelengths from the signal, and adds one or more pre-selected wavelengths into the

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multi-wavelength signal that exits in an output fiber. [4] Wavelengths carrying transit traffic pass straight through the OADM. Processing in an OADM is performed entirely in the optical domain to avoid the conversions between the electrical and optical domains. Thus, there is very little delay introduced in an OADM.

Figure 1: Sample OADM [9]

The figure above is an example of an OADM. In this case, the incoming red wavelength is dropped, while a different red wavelength is added. To some degree, OADMs are flexible. In other words, it is likely that this OADM could be configured to add and drop both red and green wavelengths, or it could be configured to pass all wavelengths through.

3. NSF Network
The NSFNet laid the foundation for the United States Internet. The NSFNet went into production in 1985 and linked six supercomputer centers at a 56 Kbps data rate. In early 1988, the NSFNet added seven additional sites and upgraded the data rate to a T1 (1.544 Mbps). The topology of the NSFNet at this point is given in the map below. [3]

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Figure 2: NSFNet Topology [3]

The NSFNet continued to add additional web sites and increase the data rates. Eventually it was decided to move the U.S. Internet to a new architecture. On April 30, 1995 the NSFNets service was terminated. [3]

4. Commercial Products
OADMs are commercially available from Ciena, Alcatel, and Cisco. The Alcatel 1640 OADM utilizes the full spectrum of the C and L bands and is able to deliver up to 160 channels on a single fiber pair, although it is only capable of adding and/or dropping 16 channels at a time. This allows for a remarkable capacity of 1.6 Tbps. This is accomplished with a BER of less than 10-16. [1] Cisco offers a line of products known as Cisco ONS 15216 OADMs. The OADM1 model is capable of adding and/or dropping one channel at a time. The OADM2 model can handle two

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channels simultaneously, while the OADM4 model can handle four channels at a time. The products operate with a channel spacing of 100 GHz but are restricted to the C band. Each OADM can deliver 32 channels. The BER is better than 10-16. [5] Ciena offers a line of OADMs under the name of CoreStream Agility Optical Transport System. The model is only capable of adding and/or dropping a single channel, though the system can support up to 64 channels in the C band. The BER is better than 10-15. [6] Pricing for these OADMs is not available without contacting a supplier. Thus, any comparison between the units above may not be fair. For example, it would not be fair to compare the performance of a Ford versus a Mercedes. While the Mercedes will certainly perform better, it will also cost far more.

5. Simulation Design
OADMs are still largely an emerging technology. As such, modules for the OADMs described above are not available using commercial network simulation programs, such as Opnet. It was thus necessary to build a simulation engine from scratch using Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2003. The decision to use a custom simulation instead of a commercial network simulation makes it impossible to compare performance of various commercial OADMs against each other. Plus, with price information, comparisons would be unfair. Thus, our simulation will focus on a comparison of OADMs against switches.

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The network used to simulate the results is the NSFNet as presented in Figure 2. This results in a network with 13 nodes and 14 links. The distance between the links was determined by using MapQuest to calculate the quickest route between the two cities on a link. This distance is probably not the shortest possible distance between the two cities, however, it is unlikely that the fiber in the actual NSFNet is the shortest distance either. The goal of this simulation was to be as flexible as possible. A header file of configurable variables was implemented so that the user could configure the network for various simulations. As the variables are referenced below, they will be included in parenthesis and in all caps. The network was configured to use either OADMs, switches, or a combination for each node. Two configurations were possible: a random configuration and a manual configuration. In the random configuration the user specifies the quantity of OADMs (NUMBER_OF_OADMS) and switches (NUMBER_OF_SWITCHES) for the network. In this case, each node is assigned to be either an OADM or switch randomly. In the manual configuration, the user would update an array (OADM_LOCATIONS) to specifically state whether a node was to be an OADM or a switch. A large assumption was made when comparing the delay at each of the nodes. As OADMs are able to pass wavelength through without any processing, it was assumed that the delay from at the OADM is zero. Switches on the other hand, must perform conversions and do some processing. The variable SWITCH_DELAY was used to determine the switching delay of a switch in seconds. In all other regards, the switches and OADMs were deemed to be equivalent.

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Traffic was assigned based on the active links variable (NUMBER_OF_ACTIVE_LINKS). A source and destination were randomly selected and the shortest route (based only on distance and link availability) using a modification of Dijkstras Algorithm was checked. A wavelength was then reserved for each of the links in the path. Each link is capable of transporting a specific number of wavelengths (NUMBER_OF_WAVELENGTHS). This process was repeated until enough traffic was added to meet the active links variable. It was assumed by the program that the active links variable is always feasible. If this assumption is false, the simulation program will never terminate.

6. Simulation Results
Many simulations were run using the simulation program described above. All of the results are based upon the average of 10 runs. This is necessary due to the random nature of the simulation program. It is expected that the curves would be even smoother if additional simulations were averaged; however, time constraints have prohibited this. The first simulation compares a network of OADMs versus a network of switches. Each link can support up to 40 wavelengths. The amount of active links was held constant for this simulation at 100 links. The switching delay time variable was varied from 0 seconds to 0.025 seconds. The average end-to-end link delay time was calculated.

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Average End-to-End Delay Time (ms)

120 100 80 60

OADM
40 20 0 0 5 10 15 20 25

Switched

Switch Delay Time

Figure 3: Performance with Various Switch Times

The Figure above shows the results. The OADM time is relatively constant. This is due to the fact that OADMs do not have any switch time. In other words, the only delay considered is the propagation delay. The Switched time is equal to the OADM time when the switch delay time is set to zero, as in our simulation a switch with delay time of zero and an OADM will perform equally. The average end-to-end delay time grows linearly as the switch delay time grows linearly. The second simulation compares the performance of a varying number of OADMs and switches. The amount of active links was held constant for this simulation at 100 links. The number of OADMs variable was varied from 0 (an all switched network) to 13 (an all OADM network). The average end-to-end link delay time was calculated.

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Average End-to-End Delay Time (ms)

120 100 80 60 40 20 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Number of OADMs

Figure 4: Performance with Various Numbers of OADMs

The results of the second simulation are included above. The delay time decreases nearly linearly as the number of OADMs increase. For this simulation, both the active links and OADM locations are determined randomly. Additional simulations should remove the irregularities experienced at OADM counts of 4 and 9. The goal of the third simulation was to find the optimal placement of OADMs. The implicit assumption is that OADMs are more expensive than switches, so network designers would like to use them as economically as possible. For this scenario, a manual configuration was used. One OADM was placed in each city with the balance of the cities having switches. The optimal city was then selected. Two OADMs (one from the optimal city, one from the rest of the cities) were then placed with the rest of the cities having switches. The optimal city for the second OADM was then selected. This process was repeated until all cities had OADMs.

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Average End-to-End Delay Time (ms)

120 100 80 60 Optimal 40 20 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Random

Quantity of OADMS

Figure 5: Performance Against Optimal Placement of OADMS in Delay

The graph above shows the performance in terms of delay against the optimal placement of OADMS. The gap between the optimal and random scenarios is greatest in the middle of the graph. The gap begins to be very small, as the effect of a few OADMs optimally placed is relatively small. This gap grows as OADMs are added until it reaches the point where OADMs are added to less frequently used nodes.
40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Figure 6: Performance Against Optimal Placement of OADMS in Percentage

The graph above shows the performance in terms of percent of delay reduction between the optimal and random case. The outlier at node 9 is due to the random nature of

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the simulation and small sample size of ten runs. This graph also shows that performance gap is the widest in the middle of the region. The optimal ordering of cities is: Denver, Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, San Diego, Champaign, Trenton, Ithaca, Seattle, Palo Alto, Salt Lake City, Lincoln, Houston, and Baltimore. There was little statistical difference between the nodes with a degree of one, so these nodes are simply listed in the order in which they were added to the graph. The degree of the nodes in the optimal ordering is: 4, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, and 1. The optimal ordering is an exact ordering of node degree with two exceptions: Ann Arbor is switched with San Diego and Trenton is switched with Champaign. Ann Arbor receives more traffic than San Diego because there are five nodes (including Houston) that are east of Ann Arbor, while there are just two nodes that are west of San Diego. The shortest distance between Pittsburgh and San Diego is through Champaign. Therefore, much of the traffic that travels from the eastern sites to the western sites travels through Champaign, leading to a heavier load of traffic for Champaign than Trenton. This is strong evidence that the overall end-to-end delay can be reduced most effectively by adding OADMs to sites that are the most frequently used. While this is probably intuitive, these results confirm that our intuition is correct and give evidence that the simulation is performing as expected.

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7. Conclusion
Our simulations have shown that the addition of OADMs to the NSFNet has a significant impact upon network performance. In some simulations, converting the network from switches to OADMs led to an 84% drop in overall network delay. OADM placement in the network can also have a large impact on the performance. In one simulation of an entirely switched network (where one switch was replaced with an OADM), a bad addition led only to a 3.09% delay reduction while the optimal addition led to a 10.71% delay reduction. If a single OADM can have such a significant impact, optimal placement of several OADMs can have a large impact. There are a couple of areas where future work is needed. Studies could be conducted on networks larger than 13 nodes. Also, the addition of OADM modules to commercial tools like Opnet could be a valuable tool for network designers.

References
[1] Alcatel 1640 OADM: Long-Haul and Ultra Long-Haul DWDM Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer. Alcatel-Lucent Inc. <http://www1.alcatel-lucent.com/products/productsummary.jsp? productNumber=a1640oadm>. [2] El-Bawab, Tarek. Optical Switching. Springer. 2006. [3] Frazer, Karen. NSFNET: A Partnership for High-Speed Networking. 1995.

<http://www.merit.edu/documents/pdf/nsfnet/nsfnet_report.pdf>. [4] Garcia, Alberto and Widjaja, Indra. Communication Networks: Fundamental Concepts and Key Architectures. McGraw Hill. 2004.

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[5] ONS 15216 Metro Dense Wave Division Multiplexing Product Family. Cisco Systems Inc. <http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/optical/ps1996/products_data_sheet0918 6a00800886c1.html>. [6] Select OADM for CoreStream Agility Optical Transport System. Ciena Inc. <http://www.ciena.com/products/products_SOADM_resources.htm>. [7] Stern, Thomas and Bala, Krishna. Multi-wavelength Optical Networks: A Layered Approach. Addison-Wesley. 2000. [8] Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Metcalfes Law. July 24, 2007, 18:02 UTC. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law>. [9] Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Optical add-drop multiplexer. December 4, 2007, 15:25 UTC. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_add-drop_multiplexer>.