The future is wireless and wired. 5G is still based on optical networks. There is no doubt that 5G and optical networks are key ICT infrastructures in the era of all things. For the 5G era, where will the optical network go?
Optical connections will be everywhere
In the past few decades, from PDH, SDH to DWDM, OTN, ASON...to FTTH, the optical network has developed leaps and bounds from the backbone network to the access network, connecting thousands of households and individuals, bringing us Rich and colorful broadband and mobile internet life.
In the future, data centers will become larger and larger, and these data centers require high-speed, low-latency optical network connections. At the same time, driven by the cloud service business model, the dedicated line business for government and enterprise customers is growing rapidly, and the importance of optical networks is becoming more prominent.
With the development of ultra-high-definition video, AR/VR and other services, fiber-to-the-home and fiber-to-the-enterprise companies can no longer meet future needs. This requires fiber to extend from the door of the home to each room, extending from the enterprise entrance to the desktop of everyone in the office. .
More importantly, in the era of industrial Internet, optical fiber networks with high speed, large capacity, anti-interference, low latency, high reliability, etc. will sink directly to the production equipment, and connect to each unit from the factory entrance. machine.
In the future, there is light in places where there is electricity, and there are fiber connectors in places with electrical connectors. The intelligent era of the Internet of Everything not only has ubiquitous 5G wireless connectivity, but also ubiquitous optical connectivity.
The transmission network has entered the era of all-optical network 2.0
Since the birth of the Internet in the 1990s, network data traffic has increased dramatically. The SDH technology in the voice era cannot meet the business needs, and the optical transport network has begun to develop from SDH to WDM. However, WDM is point-to-point communication. It only increases the transmission capacity between two points. It also needs to perform photoelectric conversion and interconnection at the network node, mainly by SDH's ADM or DXC equipment. As the network capacity continues to increase, the number of WDM wavelength multiplexing increases, and the number of ADM and XC devices increases. This leads to more and more complex network nodes and higher cost of expansion. Subsequently, the telecommunications industry began to introduce ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer) and OXC (Optical Cross-Connect) technology at network nodes to improve node processing power and networking flexibility.
Today, China's first backbone ROADM network has been in operation for one year, and achieved network cost savings of 30% to 50%, energy and space savings of 50%, business configuration efficiency is greatly improved, delay is the lowest, and the wavelength is jumped straight. This indicates that China's all-optical network has moved from the 1.0 era (all-optical network) to the all-optical network 2.0 era (all-optical automatic scheduling).
Access network to the gigabit era
With the continuous development of the transmission network, the access network is moving from full fiber to gigabit era under the support of a solid base of the transmission network.
Over the past few decades, on the access side, fixed broadband and mobile networks have been flying together, bringing a rich and informative life to families and individuals. Mobile communication has evolved from 2G to 4G, and the network speed has been increased from 2.4Kbps to 100M. Fixed broadband has also evolved from PSTN/ISDN, ADSL, VDSL to GPON/EPON technology, and the network speed has increased from 64Kbps to over 100M.
Fixed broadband and mobile networks have gone through the 100-megabit era, and now they are both entering the Gigabit era---the mobile communication network is entering the 5G Gigabit era, and the fixed broadband network is also entering the fifth with 10G PON technology. Generation of Gigabit Ultra Wide (F5G) era.
In the face of a new era, in May 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission issued the "Notice on Launching the 2019 Special Action to Promote the Rapid Development of Broadband Networks to Support the Rapid Development of Economic Growth and Quality", and proposed to launch "Double G Double Lifting". ", push fixed broadband and mobile broadband into the era of gigabit (Gbit). The three major operators have also launched their own “Double Gigabit” plans.
Facing the future, the optical network will continue to expand, the performance of optical transmission equipment will continue to increase, and it will become more simplified, more integrated and more intelligent. The whole industry will move towards the ubiquitous era of intelligent optical network.
