Techno-Economic Evaluation of Transport Network Architectures for 6G Mobile Systems

We investigate the techno-economic benefits of a novel optical transport network (OTN) architecture that meets the transport requirements of 6G systems in the Metro/Core network segments. The proposed solution is based on the disaggregation of the monolithic chassis-based node architecture that is used today to deploy OTN networks. The disaggregation breaks up the monolithic node system into stand alone white-boxes interconnected through active optical cables in a leaf-spine configuration. The leafs consist of line cards that provide client port interfaces, while the spines are Ethernet switches that emulate the process of OTN switching. The resulting solution provides a scalable and software-controlled OTN architecture based on off-the-shelf white-boxes that minimize the network acquisition costs. Results for a selected network scenario show that - compared to the monolithic solution - the disaggregated architecture yields average cost savings on the order of 39.7%.