Software-Defined Optical Networks

Dear Colleagues,

Software defined networking (SDN) is defined as a control framework that supports the programmability of network functions by decoupling the data plane and the control plane, which are currently vertically integrated in most network equipment. SDN technology allows network operators to manipulate the logical map of a network and create multiple co-existing network slices that are independent of the underlying transport technology. Enabling SDN at the optical layer can potentially facilitate application-specific network slicing at the optical layer. The combination of SDN and the recent advances in programmable optical device technologies has enabled the software-defined optical networks that can be flexibly and dynamically provisioned and reconfigured. This SDN-based flexible and unified network control function allows service providers to support a wide range of emerging dynamic applications over optical networks, such as cloud computing and optical network virtualization.

To enable software-defined optical networking, several key technical challenges must be addressed. These challenges include, but are not limited to, software-defined optical network architectures and associated protocols, the intelligent end-to-end provisioning and reconfiguration of resources to support dynamic and heterogeneous applications, the solutions for supporting multi-layer and multi-domain software-defined optical networks, and the design of mechanisms that provide survivability against optical link or node failures, etc.

This Special Issue solicits submissions of original work and survey papers on all topics related to recent advances in software-defined optical networks.

Dr. Lei Liu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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