II.1.

4 Dense Wavelength Division Multiplex Matrix The invention of low-loss optical fibres in the early
1970s with low-loss windows at about 1 300 nm wavelengths enabled transmission of light signals over
distances of tenths of kilometers without regeneration using light emitting diodes and multi-mode
fibres. In the 1980s single-mode fibres were introduced connected to Multilongitudinal Mode (MLM)
lasers transmitters permitting to transmit about 100 Mbit/s. With dispersion shifted fibres and single
longitudinal mode distributed feed-back lasers (SLMFB) systems with up to 100 km repeater sections
and about 2.5 Gbit/s transmission speed were feasible. In the 1990s regenerators, containing Erbium-
doped fibre amplifiers permitted the simultaneous transmission of many adjacent wavelengths, leading
to Dense Wavelength Division Multiplex systems (DWDM). The development permitted to transmit 2
wavelengths across the same fibre, one wave in the window 1 310 m and the other wave in the window
1 550 nm, leading to the first Wavelength Division Multiplex (WDM) systems. However, the optical
frequency division multiplex systems inherited some of the copper-bound FDM system problems, such
as the limitations of the length of each regenerator section and the number of consecutive regenerator
sections. A typical DWDM transmission system offered up to 32 wavelengths, 0.8 nm = 100 GHz
between adjacent wavelengths, each wavelength carrying 2.5 Gbit/s across a distance of about 600 km
with 6 regenerator sections, resulting in a total transmission capacity of 80 Gbit/s. Compared to single
wave optical transmission DWDM offers significant advantages: • Less dispersion effects. For a given
throughput, the individual channel rate can be decreased, thereby lessening the chromatic and
polarisation dispersion effects. As a consequence, the distance between regenerators can be increased,
although optical amplification is still required to maintain the power budget., and the capacity can be
increased on non-ideal installed plant. • Improved scalability. Adding new wavelengths, according to a
“pay-per-wavelength” approach, can simply increase the throughput. Additional wavelengths need not
be all at the same rate, thus providing added flexibility. • Relaxed specifications. DWDM relaxes the
technological constraints on the opto-electronic (O/E) components required to implement a system,
since these components need only to be performing at the highest individual wavelength rather than at
the total throughput. • Full duplex operation on one single fibre. With the advent of DWDM systems a
number of alternatives exist to increase transmission performance capacity by influencing the number
of wavelengths per fibre pair (spacing), the bit rate per wavelength, the optical frequency band and the
distance ( with or without timing regeneration). Figure 4 illustrates the parameters influencing the
expected development of DWDM systems Distance. 30 Report on Question 20-1/2 • Increase of bit rate
is limited by physical effects such as, e.g. chromatic dispersion (which might require dispersion
management), polarization mode dispersion (critical for existing installed fibres), fibre nonlinearities
(leading to cross-phase modulation and four-wave mixing) resulting in faster and more costly electronic
components (e.g. O/E conversion). • Increase of the number of wavelengths is limited by the total
available optical bandwidth (in fibre and amplifiers) and spacing between wavelength (leading to
stability problems, bit rate limitation and increased emphasis of non-linearity effects). • Increase of
distance is limited by amplifier gain (depending on bandwidth and wavelength dependent gain), number
of consecutive regenerator sections (depending on noise and jitter accumulation, and regenerators with
or without retiming functions). The various parameters depend on each other, i.e. increasing the value
of one parameter might decrease the acceptable values of other parameters. Publications describe high
capacity DWDM systems, e.g.: • 10 Gbit/s signals on 32 wavelengths leading to 320 Gbit/s. Reported
Optical Transmission Sections are 80-140 km to achieve Optical Transmission Paths of more than 600
km. • 20 Gbit/s signals on wavelengths leading to more than 1 Tbit/s on one fibre. • 10 Gbit/s signals on
150 wavelengths with 50 GHz spacing leading to 1.5 Tbit/s. For this system dispersion compensated fibre
was necessary to achieve Optical Transmission Sections of 100 km and Optical Transmission Paths of 400
km. Figure 4 – Development of DWDM systems 100 GHz 50 GHz 25 GHz Stability Problems Bit rate
Limitation Spacing 1530-1565 nm 1620 nm Frequency Band Laser and Amplifier under development 600
km 5000 km Distance without timing regeneration Noise and Bit rate limitation 2.5 Gbit /s 10 Gbit /s 40
Gbit /s Bit rate Distortion and component limitation 2005 2003 2000 3000 km Year Report on Question
20-1/2 31 In the course of the on-going evolution it is likely that optical switching facilities will be added
in the near future, starting from non-reconfigurable add-drop elements, followed by optically protected
self-healing rings, and then by optical cross connects for ring interconnection or as a basis for meshed
optical networks. However, physical constraints will likely limit the achievable size of photonic networks,
which could only be enlarged by the use of partial or total optoelectronic or photonic regenerators.
II.1.5 Synchronous Digital Hierarchy Matrix The increased demands of higher transmission bit rates,
more flexible channel handling together with more elaborate management requirements lead to the
concept of synchronous transmission. The concept was first proposed in USA by Bellcore as SONET,
Synchronous Optical Network. ITU has further refined and generalized the principles to produce the
Synchronous Digital Hierarchy, SDH. The spirit of international cooperation resulted in one worldwide
accepted standard for SDH. SDH extends the principles of Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH), while
avoiding some of the disadvantages of the PDH, resulting in the following driving factors: • Digital 64
kbit/s channels or groups of channels can be added to or extracted directly from SDH signals without
intermediate multiplexing stages leading to economic ADD/DROP equipment. • Plesiochronous signals
of different levels and belonging to different hierarchies (e.g. ETSI-Europe, ANSI-USA) can be mapped to
SDH and transmitted as SDH signals. • Digital 64 kbit/s channels or groups of channels can be switched
in Synchronous Digital Cross Connects (DXC). • The routing in DXC networks can be command controlled
permitting in a flexible way different logical network configurations based on the same physical network.
Different logical network configurations can appear at different times. • DXCs permit sorting of traffic,
e.g. an incoming digital signal carrying a mixture of data, voice and video can be converted to separate
digital signals for data, voice and video. • DXCs permit packing of traffic, e.g. incoming digital signals with
idle time slots can be combined to digital signals without idle time slots, which fully utilize the
transmission media. • DXC can be co-located with a telephone exchange. In this case DXC handles the
steady basic traffic load and the exchange covers traffic peaks. which would be more economic than one
single telephone switch with increased capacity. • Last but not least, SDH and DXC are the first
equipment types which have been specifically designed for Telecommunication Management Networks
(TMN) with ample capacity for management. The basis unit of the SDH hierarchy is the Synchronous
Transport Module, STM-1 containing 19 440 bits. STM-1 is repeated 8 000 times per second leading to
the STM-N bit rates shown below: STM-1 155.520 Mbit/s STM-4 622.08 Mbit/s STM-16 2 488.32 Mbit/s
STM-64 9 953.28 Mbit/s 32 Report on Question 20-1/2 The requirement to transport PDH signals of
different hierarchies, together with ATM signals, resulted in a complex multiplexing scheme. One STM-1
System can carry various PDH systems and one ATM system as illustrated below: 3 × 34 or 45 Mbit/s
systems 84 × 1.5 Mbit/s systems 21 × 6 Mbit/s systems 1 × 140 Mbit/s system 63 × 2 Mbit/s systems 1 ×
ATM system Four basic SDH multiplexer (MUX) types have been standardized: 1) MUX for conversion
from plesiochronous signals (according to Rec. G.703) to synchronous STM-N signals. Flexible
assignment of a tributary to any position in the STM-N frame can be provided. Suitable for the
establishment of SDH links in a plesiochronous environment. 2) MUX for conversion between various
STM signals. A number of STM-1 signals can be multiplexed to a higher bit rate. Flexible assignment of a
VC-3/4 to any position on one STM-N is possible. Permits to use the capacity of fibre optical cables
efficiently. 3) MUX for drop / insert of plesiochronous and synchronous signals to STM-N without
demultiplexing and termination of the complete signal. Single channels or groups of channels can be
added or dropped from a synchronous bit flow. A typical use are Add/Drop multiplexers in self healing
ring configurations. 4) MUX for translation (interworking) to allow C-3 payloads in VC-3s to transit
between e.g. USA and e.g. Europe based networks. Three basic Digital Cross Connect (DXC) types have
been standardized with three types of cross-connects have been standardized: 1) DXC cross-connects
140 Mbit/s plesiochronous signals or STM-1 signals 2) DXC cross-connects 2, 34 and 140 Mbit/s
plesiochronous signals 3) DXC combines the functionalities of Types 1 and 2. DXCs are characterized by
port levels and cross-connect levels, as shown in the example Figure 5. DXC 1/0 port level 2.048 Mbit/s
and cross-connect level 64 kbit/s. for e.g. 64 kbit/s leased line networks DXC 4/1 port level 140 Mbit/s
and cross-connect level VC-12 for e.g. 2 Mbit/s leased line networks DXC 4/4 port level 140 Mbit/s or
STM-1 and cross-connect level VC-4 for, e.g. network protection, together with DXC 4/1 for network
administration. Report on Question 20-1/2 33 Figure 5 – Examples of digital cross-connect equipment An
important application of SDH is the use of Multiplex Section Shared Protection (MS-SP) Rings. The total
payload in every STM-N link is divided equally into working and protection capacity. The traffic is bi-
directional: two fibre rings are used for clock-wise direction and two fibre rings for anti-clock-wise
direction. The protection capacity is shared by all the working sections. In case of a link failure a loop
back is provided at the nodes adjacent to the failed link or node Typical ring parameters are: 8 VC-4 per
link, switch time below 50 ms and up to 16 nodes a ring. In modern network configurations rings are
used in tandem, each representing e.g. a network layer. Cable faults and node faults are eliminated
using the above described principles In this case the connection of 2 rings via 2 nodes uses the
advantages of MS-SP rings leading to fail safe network configurations. II.2 Wireless Broadband Access
Technologies Wireless telecommunications comprises a wide range of technologies, services and
applications that have come into existence to meet the particular needs of different market sectors and
user environments. Different systems can be broadly characterized by: • frequency bands of operation;
• standards (in ITU, Recommendations are used instead of standards) defining the systems; • data rates
supported; Port level Cross-connect level 0 1 2 3 4 PDH Mbit /s SDH 64 kbit /s VC-12 VC-2 VC-3 VC-4 1 2
3 4 2 8 34 140 STM-1 1/0 4/1 4/4 34 Report on Question 20-1/2 • bidirectional and unidirectional
delivery mechanisms; • degree of mobility; • content and applications offered; • regulatory
requirements; and • cost. Wireless technology is perhaps one of the most potentially viable options for
many developing nations and regions seeking high-speed access, or any access at all. Relative to other
infrastructure technologies, wireless has fast deployment, and relatively wide geographic coverage. In
addition, it allows nations with little or no telecommunications infrastructure to “leapfrog”
development, or skip over building a fixed wireline system entirely and to move directly into Internet
access. Because of the mobility and portability of wireless technologies, they have the potential to spur
demand and incite new ways of accessing and using the Internet.