Recent progress in the Optical Pan-European Network project (ACTS/OPEN)

Summary form only given. Summary form only given. The OPEN project aims at the assessment of the feasibility of an Optical Pan-European overlay Network (OPEN), interconnecting major European cities by means of a mesh of high-capacity optical fiber links cross-connected through transparent photonic nodes. Both the transmission links and the routing network elements rely on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) all-optical technologies, such as wavelength translation. OPEN demonstrates the concept of a core network, built upon an existing optical fiber infrastructure, offering long-distance transparent transport. It addresses the transport both in the optical transmission medium layer (physical layer) and the optical path sublayer. The potential capacity of each fiber link will be upgradable up to at least 40 Gbit/s, each channel supporting STM-16 SDH/OC-48 SONET or higher data-rate. The high degree of transparency offered by the OPEN concept pertains to the bit-rate and to the digital frame format, which is made possible by the use of all-optical WDM technologies for transmission between the network nodes and routing through multiwavelength optical cross-connects (MOXCs) without any electrical regeneration. In particular, wavelength translation within the MOXC is a key element in this approach. The project encompasses modeling, laboratory experiments, and field implementation of a photonic network prototype, in order to determine the feasibility of the OPEN concept.