Transparent and Fast Reconfigurable Optical Network with Edge Computing Nodes for Beyond 5G applications

To fulfil stringent latency requirements of timesensitive applications in 5G and beyond networks, data has to be processed in a decentralized way. The Edge Cloud Network is composed of computational resources placed at most at tens of kilometers far from the sources of the data flows they need to process. Besides the physical proximity, nanosecond-scale reconfiguration time of optical switches and a fast control of the optical networks are also required to guarantee dynamicity with latencies on the order of tens of microseconds. Moreover, photonic switches will enable transparent bypass of nodes reducing costly, power hungry and format dependent optical to electrical to optical interfaces as well as large jitter in electrical switches. In this work, we propose an Edge Cloud network composed of a metro-access ring and optically switched edge data center. SOA-based ROADMs are used in the ring for fast add/drop of wavelengths. The edge data center is composed of top-of-rack switches interconnected via an SOA-based optical switch. A supervisory channel is used by the network nodes to exchange control packets in a time-slotted synchronous fashion, and FPGA-based controllers guarantee nanosecond-scale reconfiguration decisions.