Broadband Networks

For the Net

Description:
With the tremendous increase in traffic over the Internet, researchers started to use optical fibres to provide them high capacity communication links with much improved efficiency. More recently optical networks researchers have introduced wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), which is the technology of transmitting multiple data streams independently on a single fibre using different light wavelengths, to increase the network capacity multiple folds. In addition, using very fast switches, sharing the bandwidth in the time domain has been proposed under the name of burst switching. However these approaches introduce several challenging issues related to the light path establishment and control, network architecture, optical switch architecture, routing and wavelength and time-slot assignment, optical network survivability, routing algorithms and protocols, network security, and network management. The network access cost remains the big challenge for optical networks end users, igniting research in the area of passive optical networks (PON), Ethernet PON and WDM-PON.  

Applications:
Applications of broadband networks and broadband Internet include multimedia communications, IP-telephony, video teleconferencing, e-commerce, web services and collaborative applications

PROFESSORS

• Ahmed, Nasir Uddin
  dynamic modeling of networks, stochastic traffic modeling and performance analysis, optimization
• Bochmann (group)
  agile all-photonic networks, routing, inter-domain routing, traffic engineering, user-controlled lightpath provisioning
• Hall (group)
  optical switch architectures, agile all-photonic networks
• Ionescu (group)    Web services and collaborative applications, next-generation networks and services, IP over MPLS over optical networks
• Makrakis
  optical burst switching, protection and restoration, network architecture and protocols
• Mouftah (group)
  optical network architecture, optical switching, WDM network design, routing and wavelength assignment, survivable optical networks, protection and restoration, fault localization protocols, optical network protocols, network monitoring and testing, passive optical networks (PON), EPON and WDM-PON, user-controlled lightpath provisioning, optical burst switching, lightpath multicasting, inter-domain routing, next-generation network design, GMPLS networks design
• Yang (group) 
  optical switch architecture design, route and wavelength assignment optimization, resource optimization, traffic scheduling, network protection and restoration, agile all-photonic networks, network topologies for resource management

Some recent projects:

• Agile All-Photonic Networks [Bochmann, Hall, Yang; NSERC Research Network - Partners: Nortel-Networks, Telus, JDS Uniphase, Anritsu, BTI Photonics] show details
• User-Controlled Lightpaths (development of a control platform for network and end-system resources that can be used by the end-user and that can control network devices from different manufacturers, based on Web Services) [Bochmann; largely funded by Canarie, in collaboration with CRC (Ottawa), i2Cat (Barcelona) and Innocybe (Montreal)] show details
• Hapto-audio-visual environments for collaborative tele-surgery training over photonic networking (HAVE) [Hall/Georganas; CANARIE; industrial partner: BigBangwidth]
• Next-generation photonic transport technology [Hall; OCE & Metconnex Inc.]
• Scalable low-cost optoelectronic packet switch for access & LANs [Hall; CITO Technical Readiness]
• Photonic networks: Flexible bandwidth provision, self-similar structure, & intelligent processing [Hall; NSERC Discovery Grant];
• Novel fault localization protocols for all-optical networks [Mouftah; NSERC Idea to Innovation grant]
• Availability-aware survivable routing architecture for GMPLS networks [Mouftah; NSERC Strat. Grant - Partner: Bell Canada]