Future Optical Access Networks Enabled by Digital Signal Processing and Physical Layer Softwarization

Future access networks promise a wide variety of connection modes and greater economic advantages by accommodating more types of network interfaces. Network virtualization in the access segment, along with further deep soft-warization into the physical layer, is recommended for meeting telecom operator requirements for intelligent, scalable, and flexible end-to-end network services. In this article, we introduce a new access architecture that fully utilizes the tree network topology through a multiplexing scheme with two degrees of freedom to independently aggregate and transport multiple interfaces. The access architecture is implemented using novel reconfigurable coherent digital signal processing that optimizes the computational efficiency of virtualized central offices.