A New Step Forward with All-Optical Autonomous Driving Networks

During the Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF) 2021 in Dubai last month, Kim Wang, Marketing Director of Huawei’s NCE Optical Network domain, delivered a keynote speech on All-optical ADNs, and officially released the Huawei All-Optical Autonomous Driving Network White Paper.

“As an all-optical network is the cornerstone of the entire communications network, the all-optical autonomous driving network has become the consensus in the industry,” said Wang. “Huawei aims to build an efficient, secure, and green all-optical autonomous driving network and provide premium home broadband and private line services with zero touch, zero wait, and zero trouble, supporting the high-quality development of all services.”

Huawei also invited Omdia Research Director Ian Redpath to share his insights on all-optical networks. Redpath pointed out that with the accelerated development of digitalization, cloud services, and 5G, the scale, complexity, service agility, and deterministic experience requirements of optical networks are increasing. That in turn is driving optical networks to be automated and intelligent, and gradually evolve into all-optical autonomous networks.

Referencing the top-level architecture of the TM Forum‘s autonomous network, Huawei’s all-optical autonomous driving network solution is a scenario-based solution.

“On the one hand, intelligence is introduced to the all-optical network by introducing intelligence to the NE and network layers, accelerating all-optical network autonomy in a single domain, said Wang. “On the other, network service capabilities are fully opened to implement cross-domain collaboration and business agility.”

He then pointed out the capabilities of the current all-optical autonomous driving network solution:

Intelligent all-optical network lights up dumb resources for efficient O&M

The biggest challenge facing all-optical networks is the invisibility of dumb resources such as optical fibers and cables. The all-optical autonomous driving network solution introduces pre-connection and optical iris technology innovation at the NE layer, and combines the image recognition, big data analysis, and diagnosis capabilities of the iMaster NCE at the network layer to implement automatic ODN topology restoration, precise fault location, and precise and visualized resource management.

The intelligent analysis algorithm is used to predict deterioration faults in transmission fibers and the OCh, and identify potential risks to services carried by fibers in the same cable. Service risks can then be checked without manual intervention, instruments, or site visits.

Passive processing after a fault occurs is changed to predictive protection.

E2E home broadband experience assurance builds a high-quality “digital life” experience

To address the challenges of home broadband Wi-Fi problems, 90% of faults identified after customer complaints, and installation and maintenance personnel busy in fault locating. The all-optical automatic driving network solution implements E2E closed-loop processing of the automatic identification, diagnosis, and optimization of home broadband faults. This solution reduces the number of home visits by 30% and shortens the fault location duration by 60%, ensuring a premium home broadband service experience.

The solution analyzes root causes and network bottlenecks, helping operators identify potential home networking, broadband acceleration, and scenario-based broadband service opportunities.

E2E private line service SLA assurance and network capability openness accelerate industry digitalization

Service SLA assurance: Based on the ms-level latency map obtained from device tests, multi-dimensional availability evaluation and optimization, and dynamic bandwidth adjustment, the solution implements digital measurement of latency, availability, and bandwidth, and provides full-process assurance covering the pre-sales, sales, and after-sales phases.

Network service capability openness: iMaster NCE provides unified management, control, and analysis capabilities for all-optical networks and fully opens network service capabilities. It accelerates the automation of private line services and self-service of customers through rich interfaces such as ACTN standard northbound interfaces, 10+ OSS integration partners, and 40+ OSS/BSS integration experience – service TTM is shortened from weeks to days.

“Due to passive analog features and networking complexity of all-optical networks, it may take a long time to realize fully autonomous all-optical networks,” remarked Wang towards the end of his speech. “Huawei is looking forward to making efforts together with operators, standards organizations, research institutes, and ecosystem partners to address these challenges.”

Huawei will, he said, continue to explore key technologies and innovative applications in all-optical network planning, construction, maintenance, optimization, and marketing to bring premium connections to every home and enterprise.

Read more about Huawei’s Autonomous Driving Network solutions.

Disclaimer: Any views and/or opinions expressed in this post by individual authors or contributors are their personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Huawei Technologies.