Optical Network Softwarization: Technologies, Trends and Challenges

Nowadays, a high level of digitalization, transformation of the industry, machine-to-machine communication, and many other innovative commercial, industrial and private applications set very high requirements on the underlying optical network infrastructure. Mainly for this reason, optical networks are currently undergoing a radical change from traditional static architectures to more dynamic, flexible, and adaptable concepts. In order to optimally support the emerging applications, future optical networks should be able to provide rapid and on-demand provisioning of high data rates in a flexible and efficient manner. In this talk, we will discuss current trends and challenges in the areas of softwarization and virtualization of optical network infrastructure and review various emerging technologies and architectures for future high capacity, efficient, and flexible optical transport networks.