PANEL 3

Optical Networks - The Key Technology for Enabling the Deployment of Global ICT across Society

  • Thursday, 2 July, 11:00-12:30, Room Berlioz

 

Motivation and Background:

The United Nations has proclaimed 2015 as the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015). It is a global initiative to raise awareness and understanding among citizens of how optical technologies promote sustainable development of society by providing solutions to worldwide challenges in energy, education, agriculture, communications and health. In particular, the optical technology is the key enabler of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) society as known nowadays. The introduction of ultra-high speed and ultra-low latency optical communication and transport network solutions have radically transformed the way people and machines from everywhere can communicate across the world that was unbelievable a decades ago. 

The objective of this Panel is to discuss the key role that optical networks are playing not only in the present but also in the future of the ICT sector. The combination of the recent advances in flexible and programmable optical device technologies, together with the emerging software-defined networking (SDN) control paradigm is driving the deployment of SDN-enabled elastic optical networks. The dynamic and flexible provisioning of abstracted optical resources enables a wide range of new functionalities that go beyond a commodity providing fixed bandwidth pipes for bulk data.  An example of these new applications are optical network virtualization, inter and intra data center optical networking, orchestration of IT and optical network resources, unified control of heterogeneous resources, or network function virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI). These functionalities are key enablers for 5G, Smart Cities, Cloud and Big Data services.

 

Questions

  1. Is there room for research on optical communications and networks in EU-funded project or is it game over?
  2. When will networks require to take full advantage of the emerging flexible and programmable optical device and transponder technologies?
  3. Are transport SDN and NFV a real value that will drive new business opportunities or a hype?
  4. Do Data Centers really Need advanced software-defined high-speed and low-latency photonics technology? 
  5. What is the role of Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) in telecom applications?  Is there anything coming afterwards?

 

Participants

The panel is composed of (see CVs below):

  • Chair: Raul Muñoz (Head of Optical Networks and Systems Department, CTTC, Spain)
  • Dr. Sébastien Bigo (Director of the Optical Networks Research Department, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, France)
  • Prof. Dimitra Simeonidou (Professor of High Performance Networks, University of Bristol, and CTO of Bristol is Open, United Kingdom)
  • Juan Fernández-Palacios (Head of Core Network Evolution Unit, Telefonica Global CTO, Spain)
  • Klaus Grobe (Sr. Principal Engineer, CTO Office, ADVA Optical Networking, Germany)

 

 

Raül Munoz (SM’12) graduated in telecommunications engineering in 2001 and received a Ph.D. degree in telecommunications in 2005, both from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain. After working as undergraduate researcher at Telecom Italia Lab (Turin, Italy) in 2000, and as assistant professor at the UPC in 2001, he joined the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC) in 2002. Currently, he is Senior Researcher, Head of the Optical Network and System Department, and Manager of the Communication Networks Division. Since 2000, he has participated in several R&D projects funded by the European Commission’s Framework Programmes (FP7, FP6 and FP5) and the Spanish Ministries, as well as technology transfer projects. He has led several Spanish research projects, and currently, he leads the European Consortium of the EU-Japan project STRAUSS. His research interests include control and service management architectures, protocols and traffic engineering algorithms for future optical networks. He has published over 150 journal and international conference papers in this field. Currently he serves as Technical Program co-Chair of the European Conference on Optical Communications 2015.

 

   
Sébastien Bigo was awarded with the engineering Degree by the Institut d’Optique Graduate School of Orsay, in 1992. In 1996, he received the Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Besançon, France, for his work devoted to all-optical processing and soliton transmission. He joined Alcatel Research & Innovation (now Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs) in 1993, while being a student. In 1997, he started studying high-capacity WDM terrestrial systems, and conducted large-scale demonstration experiments, at 10Gbit/s, 40Gbit/s, 100Gbit/s, 200Gbit/s channel rates. He is currently Director of the Optical Networks research department of Bell Labs, Nozay, France. He has authored and co-authored more than 270 journal and conference papers, and 41 patents. Dr Bigo is Bell Labs Fellow. He received the Général Ferrié Award in 2003 from the French ICT society and the IEEE/SEE Brillouin Award in 2008, and received the second Prize of the 2010 Chéreau-Lavet Inventor-Engineer Award. He was elected and served as Member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Photonics Society for the 2012-2014. He was the Technical Program co-Chair of the European Conference on Optical Communications 2014.

 

 

 

Dimitra Simeonidou is a full professor of High Performance Networks at the University of Bristol and the Chief Technology Ofiicer of Bristol Is Open (www.bristolisopen.com). She joined Bristol in September 2012 after 15 years at the University of Essex where she established the internationally renowned High Performance Networks group (HPN). The HPN group has grown to 45 researchers and is consistently being recognised as one of the top Optical Networking groups in the world. She is a leading academic in the field of Optical Networks, a pioneer in the fields of optical Grid and Cloud Networking and a founder of Transport Software Defined Networking.  She is currently involved in 16 National and EU funded research projects focusing in the fields of optical networks, Data Centre Networking, Software Defined Transport Networking and smart city infrastructures. Dimitra is in the editorial teams of leading Journals in her field and chairs committees, conferences, standardisation groups and forums in the relevant bodies. She is the author and co-author of over 400 papers in peer reviewed journals and international conferences, book chapters, several standardisation documents and patents.

 

 

 

 

Juan Pedro Fernández-Palacios Giménez received the MS in Telecommunications Engineering from Polytechnic University of Valencia in 2000. In Sept. of 2000 he joined Telefonica I+D where he is currently leading the Transport Technology department within Global CTO office. Juan responsibilities in Telefonica include: definition of technical guidelines for IP, Metro and Optical network deployments in Telefonica Group, technical support for Telefonica global purchasing processes in IP, Metro,  DWDM and microwaves radio links, coordination of innovation activities in transport networks (e.g transmission beyond 100G, transport SDN, packet and optical convergence, etc). Juan is author of more than 50 publications and 6 patents on optical networks and currently is coordinating the European research project IDEALIST.

 

   

Klaus Grobe received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degrees in electrical engineering from Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany, in 1990 and 1998, respectively. He worked over 20 years in the fields of lightwave guides and WDM. This includes positions as technical staff member at German and pan-European network operators. In 2000, he joined ADVA Optical Networking SE where he now works as Sr. Principal Engineer in the CTO office in Munich, Germany. He is one of the main authors of Wavelength Division Multiplexing – A Practical Engineering Guide (Hoboken, NJ, Wiley, 2014) and authored and co-authored more than 100 technical publications as well as three further book chapters on WDM and PON technologies. His research interests include next-generation broadband access networks as well as high-speed WDM transport. He holds 25 (pending) patents. Dr. Grobe is member of the IEEE Photonics Society, the German VDE/ITG and ITG Study Group 5.3.3 on Photonic Networks. He served OFC Subcommittee 10 in 2009-2012, and works in FSAN and ITU‑T­ SG15-Q.2.