SDN-controlled Photonic System Architectures for Tb/s MAN Connectivity

According to the ever-increasing bandwidth pressure and hyperconnectivity, as particularly experienced during recent times, the metro area network (MAN) is a crucial segment to address the related challenges and requirements efficiently in terms of cost, power consumption and footprint. Recently proposed modular programmable photonic system architectures for enabling Tb/s connectivity in dynamic and agile MANs are presented. Special focus is devoted to S-BVT using vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) characterized by high modulation bandwidth and able to operate at long wavelengths and particularly within the C-band. Spectrum and space dimensions are considered to enable multi-Tb/s capacity. This approach combined with photonic integration, modularity and software defined networking (SDN) allows to obtain scalable architectures for future disaggregated optical metro networks. Programmability aspects and recent results achieved in a real network testbed are reported.