UNIT2:

OPTICAL TRANSPORT
NETWORK
 ITU-T OTN Definition

• Described in the ITU-T Recommendation G.709

(2003), OTN adds operations, administration,
maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) functionality
to optical carriers, specifically in a multi-wavelength
system such as dense wavelength division multiplexing
(DWDM).
• OTN specifies a digital wrapper, which is a method for
encapsulating an existing frame of data, regardless of
the native protocol, to create an optical data unit
(ODU), similar to that used in SDH/SONET.
• OTN provides the network management functionality
of SDH and SONET, but on a wavelength basis.
ITU-T OTN Definition
 A digital wrapper, however, is flexible in terms of frame size and
allows multiple existing frames of data to be wrapped together into
a single entity that can be more efficiently managed through a
lesser amount of overhead in a multi-wavelength system.
 The OTN specification includes framing conventions, nonintrusive
performance monitoring, error control, rate adaption, multiplexing
mechanisms, ring protection, and network restoration mechanisms
operating on a wavelength basis.
 A key element of a digital wrapper is a Reed-Solomon forward
error correction (FEC) mechanism that improves error
performance on noisy links.
 Digital wrappers have been defined for 2.5-, 10-, 40- and 100Gbps
SDH/SONET systems. SDH/SONET operation over an OTN
involves additional overhead due to encapsulation in digital
wrappers.
 The resulting line rates are defined as optical transport units
(OTUs).
 What is OTN?
 OTN is an industry-standard optical transport
protocol
 ITU G.872 "Architecture for the Optical Transport
Network (OTN)” (Oct 2001)
 Further refined in ITU-T G.709 (Jan 2003,
Amendment 3 Oct 2009) and ITU-T G.798 (May
2002, xxxx Jun 2010)
 OTN is intended to promote network
evolution beyond SONET/SDH
 Eliminates traditional TDM transport complexity and
related costs
 Removes the gaps/bottlenecks specific to emergent
packet and wavelength transport
OTN
 OTN offers tremendous CAPEX/OPEX benefits to
carriers
 Reducing CAPEX via common transport framework
– Lowers cost-per-bit via technology simplification and
transport commonality
– Integrates physical and optical layer processing across
Network Elements (NEs)
– Consequently reduces the number of NEs across the
network
 Reducing OPEX through network simplification and
integration
– Less equipment = less Operations, Administration, and
Provisioning (OAM&P)
– Technology offers simplified fault isolation and
improved trouble-shooting
How Does OTN Technology Benefit
Today‟s Carriers?
OTN Technology Delivers Value Across Many “Domains”
COMMONALITY - via wavelength-based optical
transport
 Payload equivalency for SONET/SDH, Ethernet, and/or
DWDM transport
 Common network management platform support
 Permits „endpoint-only‟ management by avoiding termination
at every midpoint
TRANSPARENCY – across the optical domain
 Integrates physical and optical layers for seamless
networking
 Promotes integration across disparate networks via
common transport framework
How Does OTN Technology Benefit
Today‟s Carriers?
EFFICIENCY – for overall cost reduction and network
monetization
 Simplified multiplexing/demultiplexing of sub-rate traffic
 Reduction in signal overhead requirements relative to
payload
EVOLUTION – to emerging technologies
 Provides simple transition to 40G and 100G transmission
speeds
 Purpose-built for Packet Optical and Wavelength-based
transport Integrated, standardized Forward Error Correction
(FEC) for extended optical reach
 Ideal for comprehensive Control-Plane network
implementation
How Does OTN Technology
Expand Carrier Applications?
 OTN Supports Several Emerging Market
Opportunities
Optical Wavelength Services
 Offers customers full end-to-end
transparency
 Protocol-independent transmission of
SONET/SDH, Ethernet, IP, and/or Lambdas
 Simplifies end-customer network
management
 Ideal for Carrier‟s carrier applications,
wholesale bandwidth services, etc.
How Does OTN Technology
Expand Carrier Applications?
Differentiated Services
 New Service Level Agreement (SLA) options
– Via OTN Control-Plane mesh
 New Integrated multi-domain operations
– E.g. Multi-Region Networking to
integrate Physical, Transport, and Data layers
under a common network management
model for customer control
 Bandwidth on Demand Services
– Fast provisioning via end-to-end OTN
OTN Supports Variety of Protocols
OTN HIERARCHY
Building an OTN Container
OTN ARCHITECTURE
OTN FRAME STRUCTURE
 OTN uses the digital wrapper technology
to wrap each wavelength into a digital
envelope consisting of a overhead section,
a forward error correction (FEC) section
and a payload section.
OTN FRAME STRUCTURE
 The overhead section lies in the head of a digital
envelope, which is used to load the overhead bytes.
 With those bytes, OTN can execute the networking
management functions through network transmission.
 The FEC part is located in the tail, which is applied
to load the FEC codes and partly perform the
detection and correction of errors.
 By minimizing the errors, FEC plays a key role in
expanding distance between optical sections and
increasing transmission rate.
 Between the header and tailer is the payload section,
which is employed to load all kinds of networking
protocol data packages without changing them.
OTN FRAME STRUCTURE
OTN FRAME STRUCTURE
OTN FRAME STRUCTURE
OTN FRAME STRUCTURE
 A frame in OTN is called an optical channel transport unit (OTU).
 There are three rates of OTU-k (k=1,2,3): 2.5Gb/s, 10Gb/s and
40Gb/s in standard G.709.
 An OTU-k is composed of four parts:
o an optical channel payload unit (OPUK),
o an optical channel data unit (ODUK),
o an optical channel transport unit (OTUK) and
o an FEC.
 An OPUK section is made up of a overhead and a payload.
 The overhead part contains the adapted information used for
supporting specific clients and each client has his/her own
overhead structure, while the payload part includes client signals
adopting specific mapping technology.
 An ODUK section offers cascade connection monitoring and end-
to-end channel monitoring, including numerous overhead fields
such as
 OTN MULTIPLEXING
 OTN supports multiplexing of ODU signals : four ODU1s
can be multiplexed into an ODU2, sixteen ODU1 s or four
ODU2s can be multiplexed into an ODU3, or a mix of
ODU1s and ODU2s can be multiplexed into an ODU3.
 OTN also supports virtual concatenation. Here, we will
limit the discussion to the OTN frame of an ODU2
carrying four ODU1s.
 OTU2 frames are organized into multiframes of size four,
where each multiframe carries the frames of four ODU1s:
ODU1[1], ODU1[2], ODU1[3], and ODU1[4].
 The pay loads of the ODU1s are byte interleaved into the
payload of a ODU2 frame. The OPU overhead of an
OTU2 frame will carry information in its PSI byte about
the multiplexed signals. The payload type indicates
multiplexed ODU signals. Bytes 2 through 17 of the PSI
indicate the type of signals being multiplexed, for
example, whether the signals are ODU1, ODU2, or
ODU3, and their position in the payload.
 GENERIC FRAMING
PROCEDURE
 GFP is a common method to adapt diverse packet
protocols at the link layer to be transported over
SONET/SDH or the Optical Transport Network
(OTN).
 It facilitates interoperability of equipment of different
vendors.
GENERIC FRAMING
PROCEDURE
 The packet protocols can have variable-length
packets, such as Ethernet, IP over PPP, Gigabit
Ethernet, and Resilient Packet Ring (RPR); or have
fixed-length packets, such as Fibre Channel.
 For clients with variable-length packets, GFP can
be combined with SONET/SDH Virtual
Concatenation (VCAT) and Link Capacity
Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) to provide packet
links
 GFP has common aspects and client-specific aspects.
 The GFP common aspects are basic functions
common to all clients, while the GFP client
specific aspects have adaption features that
depend on the client protocol.
 GENERIC FRAMING
PROCEDURE
 The GFP common aspects include the functions of
 frame delineation,
 multiplexing,
 frame scrambling, and
 client management.
 The GFP client-specific aspects are the mappings of the client signal to GFP
frames.
 There are two mappings: frame mapped GFP (GFP-F) or transparent mapped
GFP (GFP-T).
 Frame mapped GFP will simply encapsulate each client packet into a GFP
frame and is applicable to variable-length packets.
 Transparent mapped GFP is applicable to fixed-length packets that are
encoded by (8,10) line codes that require very low transmission latency,
primarily Fibre Channel
GFP FRAME STRUCTURE
GFP FRAMETYPES
 GFP FRAME STRUCTURE
 GFP has client and control frames.
 A client frame can either be a client data frame (CDF), which carries client data; or a
client management frame (CMF), which carries management information of the client
signal or GFP connection.
 An important control frame is the idle frame, which is sent whenever the GFP
connection has nothing to carry. Therefore, a GFP connection is always carrying a frame.
 The Core Header is 4 bytes long and consists of a two-byte Payload Length Identifier
(PLI). It also has a 2-byte cyclic redundancy check (CRC) to protect itself.
 The PLI can either have the length of the GFP frame in bytes or indicate that the frame is
a control frame.
 The Payload Area carries information about the client payload and can vary in
 Length with a maximum of 65,535 bytes.
 It is composed of a Payload Header, Payload Information field, and an optional Frame
Check Sequence (FCS).
 The Payload Header indicates the structure of the payload, and the Payload Information
field carries the client‟s signal.
 The FCS is a 4-byte cyclic redundancy check to protect the Payload Information field.
 GFP FRAME STRUCTURE
 The Payload Header has a 2-byte type field, a 2-byte cyclic
redundancy check to protect just the type field, and an optional
extension field.
 The extension field can be up to 60 bytes, so the Payload Header
can have length between 4 and 64 bytes.
 If the frame is a client frame, the payload type field has a subfield
that indicates whether the GFP frame is a client data frame or client
management frame, and a subfield that indicates whether there is an
FCS.
 It also has subfields to indicate the client‟s protocol, whether the
frame is frame mapped or transparent mapped, and the type of
extension if any to the Payload Header.
GFP FRAME STRUCTURE
 There are extension fields for linear and ring
variants.
 The linear extension supports multiple
clients sharing a GFP point to-point
connection, whereas the ring extension
supports multiple clients in a ring
configuration.
 For example, the linear extension has an 8-
bit channel identification (CID) field to
indicate one of 256 communication channels.
 The extensions also have a 2-byte cyclic
redundancy check.