Sliceable Transponders: Pre-Programmed OAM, Control, and Management

Sliceable transponders (S-BVTs) are expected to increase flexibility of elastic optical networks by providing multiple independent optical flows that can be routed based on operators needs and traffic. The support of several transmission modes (e.g., modulation format, coding, baud rate) also enables to adapt the transmission to the physical layer characteristics. Thus, a proper control of the S-BVT configuration is mandatory, as well as the monitoring of optical flows and the management of monitoring information. NETCONF, based on YANG modeling language, is emerging as a software defined networking protocol supporting configuration messages as well as messages to exchange monitoring information within the management system. This paper presents control and management of sliceable transponders through NETCONF and YANG. Three operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) procedures are presented to guarantee the maintenance of services in the presence of faults or physical layer degradations: centralized, hierarchical, and a scheme based on preprogrammed OAM. A YANG model enabling the preprogrammed OAM is proposed. Simulations show that hierarchical and preprogrammed OAM provide faster reaction time to degradations.