Munich, Germany, March 27, 2003. At OFC in Atlanta Siemens ICN presented heuristic formulas derived from simulations to estimate the wavelength demand in photonic networks. Simple and general formulas help carriers and technical sales to reduce network planning costs.
Today's situation in the telecom market is simultaneously characterized by enormous technical progress and a dramatic economic downturn. The economic downturn requires the introduction of new networking technologies even in the transport layer of the backbone networks. In order to save on capital expenditures (CapEx) for next generation transport networks, transparent networking with sparse wavelength conversion and optical light path regeneration must be introduced.
It is well accepted that the transparent networking approach will keep the CapEx down to acceptable level. On the other hand, much discussion on the resulting additional operational costs (OpEx) of the carriers exists. The latter results possibly in an expected increase in the planning effort of the carriers.
To cover this planning problem simple to use planning methods have to be available for the next generation wavelength routed optical networks (WRONs). Beside these planning methods, technical sales of the system vendors as well as the network planning groups of the network operators need simple algorithms for fast estimation of the costs for a planned network topology with a given traffic demand. Siemens ICN developed equations that allow for a simple estimate the wavelength demand. From thus results networks planers can an estimate of the costs of the photonic layer of a wavelength routed transport network.
For more information, visit www.siemens.com/networks .
WDM Solutions