Experimental Validation of a Converged Metro Architecture for Transparent Mobile Front-/Back-Haul Traffic Delivery Using SDN-Enabled Sliceable Bitrate Variable Transceivers

We experimentally demonstrate transparent and dynamic delivery of mobile front-/back-haul in converged optical metro architecture, employing software-defined networking enabled sliceable bandwidth variable transceivers based on adaptive multicarrier modulation. The proposed architecture is specifically tailored for a transparent services delivery across the access and metro network segments. Therefore, several challenges are discussed, such as functional split requirements and bidirectional transmission (duplex) over these different segments. In order to prove the validity of this concept, network experiments have been carried out in a hybrid metro/access testbed. Results show successful connectivity at distances up to 175 km, including the access segment, and capacities beyond 20 Gb/s per flow.