Network Coding in Photonic-land: Three Commandments for Future-proof Optical Core Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes integrating network coding into optical core networks to enhance capacity efficiency amid the capacity crunch, reviewing recent research and outlining three key principles for future implementation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel perspective on using network coding in optical networks, highlighting three critical aspects for practical deployment and future research directions.

Findings

Network coding can serve as a new multiplexing dimension.

Algorithmic design is crucial for NC-enabled optical networks.

NC offers a new approach for securing optical signals at physical layers.

Abstract

The digital transformation has been underway, creating digital shadows of (almost) all physical entities and moving them to the Internet. The era of Internet of Everything has therefore started to come into play, giving rise to unprecedented traffic growths. In this context, optical core networks forming the backbone of Internet infrastructure have been under critical issues of reaching the capacity limit of conventional fiber, a phenomenon widely referred as capacity crunch. For many years, the many-fold increases in fiber capacity is thanks to exploiting physical dimensions for multiplexing optical signals such as wavelength, polarization, time and lately space-division multiplexing using multi-core fibers and such route seems to come to an end as almost all known ways have been exploited. This necessitates for a departure from traditional approaches to use the fiber capacity more efficiently and thereby improve economics of scale. This paper lays out a new perspective to integrate network coding (NC) functions into optical networks to achieve greater capacity efficiency by upgrading intermediate nodes functionalities. In addition to the review of recent proposals on new research problems enabled by NC operation in optical networks, we also report state-of-the-art findings in the literature in an effort to renew the interest of NC in optical networks and discuss three critical points for pushing forward its applicability and practicality including i) NC as a new dimension for multiplexing optical signals ii) algorithmic aspects of NC-enabled optical networks design iii) NC as an entirely fresh way for securing optical signals at physical layers