Huawei, Etisalat complete compact all-optical cross-connect trial

Huawei, in association with UAE’s telecom provider Etisalat, has completed the first trial of compact all-optical cross-connect (OXC) for the transport industry.
OXC is a device used by telecom carriers to switch high-speed optical signals in a fiber optic network, such as an optical mesh network. It will help simplify optical layer architecture to build a future-oriented network infrastructure.
The OptiXtrans OSN 9800 P32C is a large-capacity OXC device that can be used in the backbone or aggregation layer. It meets the requirements for fast grooming of large-granularity services and separated east-west deployment in a transport network.
The ‘OptiXtrans series OSN 9800 P32C’ trial will pave way for application of the OXC solution for transport networks, the company said.
This solution will significantly improve network scalability, shorten time to market (TTM) for new services, and reduce operations and maintenance (O&M) costs.
The tested product features liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) technology which enables the optical switching capacity to Pbps level (Peta Bits Per second) achieving the industry’s highest compact 16-degree grooming capability. The device integration is nine times that of the traditional reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) solution, which can save 80% of the room space.
Featuring the optical backplane technology, the OXC product can print more than 1,000 optical fibers on an A4 size backplane, shortening the service provisioning time from 30 minutes to three minutes and supporting fully automating fiber scheduling.
The digital optical layer adopts the Huawei-developed optical label technology to support end-to-end visibility of wavelength-level network status. The optical network troubleshooting time is shortened from hours to minutes to achieve efficient optical-layer operation and maintenance.
Esmaeel Al Hammadi, senior vice president, Network Development at Etisalat, said, “This new solution with Huawei will enhance development of the infrastructure and simplify the network, reducing service provisioning time, and improving efficiency in operations and maintenance to provide an optimal network experience for customers.”