VOL. 20 · NO. 3 · ISSUE 176JUN 2018

ice group: To be Lean and Focused

Bangladesh: Leveraging ICT to Build a Smart Nation

Special Topic:

VIP Voices

Stan Miller, Chairman of the Board at ice group

Beyond-100G OTNScan for mobile reading

ZTE TECHNOLOGIES JUN 2018

CONTENTS

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Reporter: Liu Yang

Reporter: Liu Yang

By Tommy Bjorkberg

By Wang Taili

Source: Videos at MWC 2018

By Yu Jianjun

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ice group: To be Lean and Focused

Bangladesh: Leveraging ICT to Build a Smart Nation

Interviews with Global Operators on 5G, ZTE

Core vs. Edge in 5G

Trends and Key Technologies of Beyond-100G

New Technologies for Single-Carrier 400G Transmission

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

Tech Forum

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Prospects of ZTE’s Beyond-100G OTN Transport

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By Li Qingle

By Wang Weiming

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Creating an Open and Programmable Beyond-100G OTN with SDN

ZTE’s Research Test on Ultra-High-Speed FECLeads Development of the Latest 400G FEC Standards

By Ye Yongheng，Zhu Jinkui

By Li Panfeng, Hu Jicheng

By Shi Kai

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Telefonica Mexico Movistar: Boosting Service Development with Ultra-High-Speed Optical Transport Network

NetCologne: The Pioneer of G.fast Access in Germany

Success Stories

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400G20

ZTE TECHNOLOGIES

Advisory CommitteeDirector: Wang Xiang Deputy Directors : Yu Yifang, Zhang Wanchun, Zhu YongxingAdvisers: Chen Jian, Cui Li, Fang Jianliang, Yang Jiaxiao

Editorial BoardDirector: Wang Xiang Deputy Director: Huang Xinming

Sponsor: ZTE CorporationEdited By Corporate Development DepartmentEditor-in-Chief: Wang XiangDeputy Editor-in-Chief: Huang XinmingEditorial Director: Liu YangExecut ive Editor-in-Chief: Yue Lihua

Circulation Manager: Wang Pingping

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ZTE News

23 March 2018, Shenzhen, China ― ZTE completes an ultra-high-speed 200 Gbps optical communication coding invest igat ion and ver i f icat ion system, demonstrating the record-setting throughput among the same type systems.

Based on the system, ZTE completed the research test on a recent FEC solution proposed for an international 400G standard. ZTE’s research work revealed a performance degradation of the proposed FEC scheme at ultra-low bit error rate (BER) as well as its root cause that is invisible to existing soft-ware based simulation and verification means. ZTE’s further investigations indicated directions for resolving the problem.

This work demonstrated at 200 Gbps for the first time a practical, effective, and efficient thorough investigation on coding performance at ultra-low BERs down to 10-15, exerting a critical influence on 400G standards to be determined. The report of the research has been accepted as a post-deadline paper at this year’s Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC).

Post-deadl ine papers at OFC represent the industry’s most inf luential research results selected globally by the Technical Program Committee of the conference, which is composed of the top experts in the industry and academia. These papers are presented in the closing day of the conference.

ZTE’s recent verification results on the standard-oriented FEC solution are timely, cutting-edge and rigorous in argumentation, and will have a direct inf luence on the completion of the next-generation 400G optical communication standards. It is also the first time that a research achievement led and completed by a Chinese enterprise in the optical communication algorithm category was accepted as a post-deadline paper at OFC, which demonstrates ZTE’s leading position in technological innovation and product development in the optical communication field.

“ZTE’s u lt ra-h igh-speed 200 Gbps opt ica l communication coding investigation and verification

ZTE Completes the Highest-Speed Optical Communication Coding Investigation and Verification System

system resolves the problem of coding performance investigation in the optical communication systems at ultra-low post-decoding BERs, which has been a challenge facing the academia and the industry for more than 20 years. Employing this system, ZTE completed the investigation and verification of a 400G standards proposal within two weeks. The demonstrations would have a long-term and profound influence on the error-correction coding research in optical communications,” said Dr. CaiYi from ZTE in the post-deadline paper presentation.

ZTE has long been commit ted to providing 400G/1T technology with important R&D resources. The company has submitted dozens of patent proposals involving optical modulators, framers, chips and algorithms, and has accomplished a number of key innovations in the high-speed optical communication field. So far, ZTE has deployed more than 400 100G and beyond commercial networks and trial networks for high-end operators in Asia-Pacific, Europe, America and Africa, with the total f iber length exceeding 400,000 km.

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ON/IP

ZTE Participates in EANTC’s Interoperability Test

11 Apr i l 2018, Shenzhen, China ― ZTE announced that its data products have participated i n t h e p u b l i c m u l t i -ve n d o r interoperability test organized by t he Eu r o p e a n Adva nc e d Networking Test Center (EANTC).

The multi-vendor interoperability test held by EANTC aims to verify the capabilities of vendors’ equipment in supporting advances in EVPN, SDN, and PCEP features.

The test results are released at the MPLS+SDN+NFV World Congress 2018 in Par is. The r e su l t s show t ha t ZT E d a t a p r o d u c t s f e a t u r e e xc e l l e n t interoperability and can provide effect ive and pragmatic SDN s o l u t io n t o a d d r e s s t r a f f i c opt imizat ion and schedul ing demands in existing networks and data centers of operators.

ZTE core routers and SDN WA N c ont rol le r s i nc lud i ng Z X R 10 T 8 0 0 0 -18 , Z X R 10 M6000-18S, ZXR10 M6000-8S PLUS, ZXR10 M6000-5S, ZXR10 M6000-3S, and ZENIC WAN Controller participated in the test, successfully connect ing with equipment from multiple vendors in EVPN, BGP-LS, and PCEP.

In terms of SDN, ZTE routers worked as PCC and it s SDN WAN controller worked as PCE, interconnecting with equipment from other vendors. They can collect link status, implement new path algorithm, distribute new paths, and realize t raff ic optimization especially when the network topology is changing.

ZTE Designated as the Chair of Newly Formed IEEE802.11 NGV SG

13 April 2018, Shenzhen, China ― ZTE announced that it has been designated as the chair of newly formed IEEE 802.11 Next Generation V2X Study Group (NGV SG).

The goal of the NGV SG is to define the scope and develop the PAR and CSD for an IEEE 802.11 standard o n n e x t - g e n e r a t i o n V 2 X w h i l e maintaining backward compatibility with 802.11p. Sun Bo, a ZTE standard

expert, was designated as the chair of the IEEE 802.11 NGV SG.

12 April 2018, Shenzhen, China ― ZTE announced that its bearer network products have witnessed a rapid growth during 2017, according to the report recently released by Ovum, a leading global technology research and consulting firm.

According to Ovum, ZTE’s ON global market share had increased by 1.84% in 2017, ranking No.2 in the world and No.1 in the growth. In high-speed optics, ZTE ranks No.2 in the 100G ports market share and No.1 in the shipment increase with the growth rate of 3.46%. In Core IP/MPLS of service provider switching & routing (SPSR), ZTE moves up one spot to No.4. In Edge IP/MPLS, ZTE’s market

share increases by 1.2%, ranking No.1 in the growth.

ZTE was dedicated to the ON and I P f ields i n 2017 and made r e m a r k a b l e a c h i e v e m e n t s i n both technological prog ress and commercial deployment.

I n 2 0 17 , Z T E l a u n c h e d a com mercia l ly v iable i ntel l igent optical cross-connect product, which supports fully automatic optical cross-connection based on the all-optical switching technology. Capable of avoiding wrong f iber connections, the product can solve the problems of difficult deployment and maintenance, a nd reduce t he ove ra l l ne t work construction costs for operators.

Ovum: ZTE Gains No.1 Market Share Growth in Global ON and Edge IP/MPLS

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Reporter: Liu Yang

ice group:To be Lean and Focused

Stan Miller, Chairman of the Board at ice group

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ice group:To be Lean and Focused

e must be cautious not to reinvent the wheel, said Stan Miller, Chairman of the Board at ice group, speaking to ZTE Technologies, who believes that the company should be lean and

focused. As an industry veteran, he shared with us his business philosophy and future goals of the company. ice group is an international telecommunications company focusing on wireless data communication services. In addition to its high speed mobile broadband services in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, the group has operations in Brazil, Indonesia and the Philippines.

What competitive advantages does ice group have?

I think the first thing to say is that we don’t see the other operators as competitors at all. We utilize lower frequencies but also in Norway higher frequencies with LTE. Basically we build data-centric networks. We are focusing more on partnerships and relationships such as B2B rather than B2C. So a lot of our customers belong to brands, utilizing our networks. We are building a completely different business from the one people believe our competitors are building. We’ve only got data. That is a big differentiator.

We’ve got two kinds of markets in which we operate. The first one is developed markets such as Norway, Denmark and Sweden, where there is vast land mass, a relatively small population and existing infrastructure. We make a difference because we can cover the whole land mass. The second kind of market is developing markets with no infrastructure out there. There is a very large land mass and a very big population. The countries we are focusing on at the moment are Indonesia, Philippines and Brazil. We cover parts of the countries other operators haven’t covered yet. For instance, in Indonesia, everybody is competing in Jakarta but we go outside of Jakarta as well. That’s how we differentiate. We build complementary networks.

What changes our business is that we are deploying a different business model from that of traditional operators which is postpaid and prepaid. We are

deploying a service where customers can choose the speed and the amount of data and they pay us in advance for the service. Everything (voice, SMS and data) is included. You can call it an iTunes kind of business model. If you want to download a song, you pay 99 cents and you get the song.

You have many years’ experience in telecommunications. What operational philosophy have you brought to ice group?

I think there are a couple of key areas that are very important. There are people better at innovations than telecom companies and operators. Therefore, it is important to partner with companies instead of creating the same infrastructure that normal telecom operators have. We believe we want to be lean and focused. In terms of what we do, we focus on the commercial aspects. We partner with companies like ZTE to bring us innovation.

Secondly, all telecom operators believe that they should get their money from the end consumers. We have a philosophy where we say what I can take from my end customers for free and how I can earn money from other people for doing that. That is a big shift from the normal telecom operators thinking. For normal telecom operators, when thinking about APRU, they think about their own users. When we look at APRU, we not only look at that part but also how else we can make money.

As far as I know, about 4 billion people in the world don’t have any access to data or mobile communications. For instance, in Indonesia alone, there are 67 thousand schools that have no connectivity. From the logistics point of view, just to get the school books to these schools is a very expensive exercise. If we can cover those schools, it brings down the cost of logistics and we can earn money from doing that but not from charging the children going to school. This is very important for us. We can think of companies like Facebook and Google. They have been trying to use drones, balloons and satellites to cover people in the countries where they don’t have coverage at the moment. So you can imagine in the partnership we can

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supply the infrastructure and earn some money from them for doing that. We are busy looking at those kinds of business models.

How important are applications to ice group’s strategy?

It is critical to us. It does not mean that we have to invent them. We need to share our commercial thinking with clever people who can design these things. The simpler the better. In today’s world, we must be cautious not to reinvent the wheel.

Operating in Scandinavia and emerging markets, how do you drive synergy within the group?

It is completely different. But at the end of day, the business model should be the same for all. At the moment, we are not in the phase of creating the synergies. Obviously, there is a timing difference between Norway, Indonesia, Philippines and Brazil. Norway and Sweden have been a laboratory where we test things. We just acquired a stake in a Brazilian mobile operator, and our operations in Indonesia and Philippines are in the transition to LTE. Ultimately, the ecosystems of the whole business would be the same. The idea is to have one center that manages all the technologies for all the networks and one operating system. Of course, you have different languages in different countries but the engine room should be the same for all of them. In that regard, our partnership with ZTE is very important because we want to grow with one partner all over the world.

How do you describe ZTE as a partner?

My relationship with ZTE goes back over 10 years when I was at KPN. They are an excellent partner and never go back on their word. When they say that they will do something, they will do it; if they say they can’t, they would be upfront and say they can’t do it. Obviously relationships also depend on personalities and so forth. With ZTE, I’ve built up a long-standing relationship over many years. I find them

to be extremely reliable, trustworthy and supportive and focused on helping us to find solutions. I don’t think I can choose any better partner than ZTE. I also recommend them to many other companies of which I am on the board.

How do you exploit the new growth markets like IoT?

In terms of IoT, the first thing you need is connectivity. That’s why our networks must cover all areas. You cannot have a self-driving car in Sweden if you have no connectivity. In order to have IoT, you not only need external coverage but also indoor coverage if you want your fridge to do something. That’s exactly where we come in. We can supply it at a very economical fee because we don’t have the same structure as the other telecom companies. We employ very few people and have a reliable partner like ZTE to actually do the work. We work on the commercial part of the business.

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GDP of Sweden. All the forestry equipment is working on our network. We didn’t develop the applications but just provide the network. With regard to coffee plantations in Brazil, these people need access to the coffee trading markets. Even the oil industry in Norway needs communication around. So there are a lot of specific fields that we’d like to cooperate with. The obvious one is military and police. Let’s call it blue light services (ambulances). They need high security and a partner to do that. That’s not something we’ll supply. But we will do it together with a military kind of organization that supplies that kind of technology. For instance, in Britain you’ve got BAE. They will take the capacity from us and supply the blue light services. We want to enter partnerships with people that are trusted in the industry. If you think of self-driving cars, it’s better to partner with Volvo and supply them with the network than to try to figure out how to make a self-driving car.

What are your goals for the next five years?

In five years, we’d like to cover one billion people in the world with our networks. We want to only take 10 percent of those populations, which is 100 million. We want to earn 10 dollars per month from the 100 million. We’d like to have a margin of about 50 percent. When I say 10 dollars, I don’t mean 10 dollars from those customers but earn money from those customers being on our network by supplying them with other services for which we get paid for.

The advantage we have is restarting with a completely clean slate. We are not building old legacy business or an old telecom system. We already cover 500 million, if you count Indonesia, Philippines and Brazil together. We just need to do a few more to reach 1 billion. And I want us to be the lowest-cost manufacturer of a megabyte of data.

I want the system to be completely self-service so the customers can completely help themselves. This is very important from our point of view. And we want to be the friendliest company. Telecom companies are not known for being customer-friendly. So we want to make it as simple as possible and very transparent for the customers.

In the past, people thought that telecom operators need to go into all kinds of services like music, which means that you must not be a dumb pipe. I say you mustn’t be a dumb pipe but being a clever pipe can be a very good business. If you look at satellite operators, they don’t make music, set-top boxes or movies. They only own the satellite and just sign the contract of 15–20 years for the satellite. Their EBITDA margin is about 80 percent. It’s a profitable business. That’s the same view that we have. Anybody can use our network. We own and operate the networks. When I say “operate”, we’ll outsource that to companies like ZTE because they can do this much faster and better than we can. We want to set the commercial strategy.

What vertical industries are you focusing on?

It depends on the country and the stage of development. For instance, in Sweden, we serve the forestry industry with our networks. It is very automated as you can imagine. It is 10 percent of the

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Bangladesh: Leveraging ICT to Build a Smart Nation

Reporter: Liu Yang

Claude Strasser, CEO of POST Luxembourg

Subir Kishore Choudhury, ICT Division Secretary

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angladesh has seen tremendous growth in the ICT sector since being boosted by the government’s Digital Bangladesh vision. We have one of the highest ICT growth rates in Asia,

declared Subir Kishore Choudhury, ICT Division Secretary, whilst speaking to ZTE Technologies at the beginning of this year about the achievements made in the ICT sector and the challenges which lie ahead. He called for all international companies who want to develop their business in Bangladesh to step forward. Similarly he emphasized the success of the cooperation with ZTE in ICT development in Bangladesh.

How would you describe the ICT Division’s role facing today’s rapidly changing and expanding ICT industry?

Facing the rapid changes and expansion in the ICT industry, the ICT Division has been working relentlessly. It works mainly on policy formulation, establishing infrastructure, connectivity, providing export incentives, innovation funds, knowledge sharing through various expos and human resource development according to the needs of the industry. We are establishing 28 High-Tech Parks and training people to support them according to industry needs. We have formulated some friendly policies for the industry. Our legal system is totally aimed at facilitating the expansion of the ICT industry in the country. The ICT Division has 23 ongoing projects, which helps the country achieve overall socio-economic development by establishing universal access to ICT for all through research, development, and successful utilization and management of ICT.

How would you characterize Bangladesh’s ICT development? Where do you position Bangladesh in terms of ICT growth in Asia?

The Bangladesh government has officially recognized the potential of the ICT industry and its impact on the economy. In collaboration with industry associations and international trade support institutions,

Bthe government has taken both short- and long-term measures (Vision 2021) to support and enhance development of the domestic sector and increase the export of ICT products and services. The ICT industry has consistently grown by 20–30% annually in recent years. Over 800 registered ICT companies generated total revenues of approximately $500 million. More than 75 percent of companies are involved in customized application development and maintenance, 50 percent are dedicated to IT enabled services, and 45 percent offer E-commerce/Web services. 60 percent of companies solely focus on the domestic market. The International Trade Center estimates that approximately 200 companies export their products and services to international markets. In addition to the registered workforce, thousands of independent freelancers offer their services on online marketplaces and 16,000 students graduate annually from ICT courses at more than 100 public and private universities. All these statistics are proof of our development in the ICT sector.

Bangladesh has been making significant growth since 2008 in the ICT sector. Mobile phone users have increased in number to over 140 million and internet subscribers have increased to over 80 million. This is one of the highest ICT growth rates in Asia.

What are the most important elements of Digital Bangladesh?

The most important elements of Digital Bangladesh are enhanced e-governance, digital connectivity, HRD for ICT and IT industry promotion. We need to set up complete connectivity throughout the country. For this reason, we are carrying out the big projects such as Info-Sarker I, II, III projects. We need a higher class data center for data preservation and processing. For that, we are establishing an IV Tier National Data Center. To encourage all related industries in developing ICT, we are setting up High-Tech Parks all over the country. When modernizing urban and rural life, using ICT technology is also very important. We are planning to set up a smart city in Bangladesh using ICT technology. You will be seeing the changes

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everywhere.

What are the Ministry highlights in 2017?

In 2017, the Uptime Institute awarded the Tier Certification of Design Documents (for fulfilling Tier IV Fault Tolerant Criteria) for the IV Tier National Data Center which is being established in Kaliakoir, Gazipur. We have been awarded the ‘Global Mobile Government Award’ for the role in creating mobile-based application development and mass awareness during the Mobile Government World Summit 2017 held in Brighton, UK from May 7th to 9th. We have brought 2600 Unions under national connectivity. Sheikh Hasina Software Technology Park (STP) has already come to operation. The establishment of High-Tech Parks is in full swing.

The ICT industry is growing fast in Bangladesh. What are some of the innovative practices that have been proven to be successful?

To be honest, it is all due to the right policy set by Hon’able Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Hon’able ICT Advisor Sajeeb Wazed. The government has taken the right way for promoting the economy in Bangladesh. Industry-friendly policies, incentives on ICT product and service exports, innovation funds, knowledge sharing through expos are some of the innovative practices that have proven to be successful.

What have been the achievements in

e-governance so far? And how would you characterize the IV Tier National Data Center Project?

Currently around 50 percent of government services are being delivered online, such as tax filing, e-procurement, passport, birth registration, social services, e-payment and admissions.

The data center is the core and basis for Digital Bangladesh, without which we cannot effectively store, use and process the data. Under the IV Tier National Data Center Project, we can develop even more, such as e-education, e-tourism, e-health and smart city management.

What work has been done in the direction of developing the smart city concept? What could give this a further push?

When talking about smart city, taking as an example when you land in Bangladesh, you have to first buy a SIM card. By means of the mobile network, we will push to you basic knowledge about Dhaka and Bangladesh, about interesting places, about the delicious food etc. Following this, you might need to

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call a taxi/car using your mobile. On the way from the airport to the hotel, you can take a look at the real time traffic situation on the Global Positioning System (GPS) on your mobile. This means that we need to collect data from every corner of the city in order to inform people and even the city management for the better running of city components. Different departments are participating in discussions to find the most efficient way for establishing a smart city in order to improve the quality of government services and citizen welfare. Our ICT Division will take the leading role in developing smart city in Bangladesh.

The majority of the population lives in the rural areas. What plans are being made for increasing the use of ICT in rural areas?

The ICT Division has initiated the leveraging ICT project for improving people’s ICT ability. In the future, they can use ICT technology for getting better jobs and improving their work skills. Besides this, we set up fiber connectivity throughout the country; this shortens the distance between each and every citizen. We have established digital labs in the schools in rural areas and connected rural areas with urban areas. There are more than 4000 Union Digital Centers (UDCs) to serve the rural areas digitally.

What are the biggest challenges that Bangladesh faces in ICT applications?

Our challenge is mainly getting sufficient investment in the ICT sector. Another challenge in the sector is R&D, collaboration between industry and academia. We have trainable human resources here. I would like to take this opportunity to call out to all international companies or those companies who want to develop their business in Bangladesh.

What is the strategy for advanced cyber security?

Cyber security is very essential for all over the world. The government of Bangladesh pays much attention to this. Bangladesh has devised its own cyber

In an interview

security strategies. As per cyber security policy and strategic guidelines, the ICT Division and its agency have established the Cyber Security Training Lab, Cyber Forensic Lab and CERT. All other agencies, such as BTRC, Bangladesh Police, Bangladesh Bank are also going to establish CERTs. We have our own research and development on cyber security software and we are also collaborating with developed countries on this subject.

What projects are you going to explore in the future?

We have plans to take projects on Connected Bangladesh, Electronic Land Registration, Establishment of CCA CIRT, Modernization of Rural and Urban Lives through ICT, Integrated e-Government, Establishment of E-mail & Digital Literacy Centre, Skill Development of IT Engineers Targeting the Japanese Market and several other special issues.

How is ZTE contributing to the growth of ICT in Bangladesh? How can you describe the cooperation with ZTE?

As far as I know, ZTE has been working in Bangladesh for more than 10 years. ZTE has been developing our IV Tier National Data Center. They are also implementing ICT and power related projects in other organizations as well. ZTE has clearly contributed a lot to ICT growth in Bangladesh. The ICT Division is working well with ZTE and we will work even better in the future for more ICT developments in Bangladesh.

What does the future hold for Bangladesh’s ICT sector?

Bangladesh has been trying to be a smart nation using ICT in all government areas as well as in the private sector. Since 2008 we have been moving forward to achieve our goals under the leadership of Her Excellency Hon’able Prime Minister Sheik Hasina and Hon’able ICT Advisor Sajeeb Wazed.

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G is a major technology trend that will bring big changes in the future. ZTE is focusing on the development of 5G to help operators meet new challenges

and opportunities. In a series of interviews during MWC 2018, ZTE’s partners across the world talked about the prospects of 5G and their cooperation with ZTE.

Where do you see the future of Pan 5G including 5G connection, bearing, services, and terminals?

We see that we are living in exponential times. 5G in my view provides a platform. A platform, which is beyond radio. It goes into end-to-end user

Interviews with Global Operators on 5G, ZTE

Source: Videos at MWC 2018

possibilities. For users, I don’t mean human beings but objects. Therefore, 5G creates a platform for us as operators to really create a connected society. It is an enabler. We need to see that 5G-only radio speeds should not confuse us. It is end to end. It is about network slicing. It is QoS. It is really giving enterprise customers a new value and it is coming with a connected society at home, giving users the same flexibility if not more.

What do you think about ZTE’s Pan 5G innovations?

I have to say that the ZTE booth has a refreshing look, and the reason is that the focus is on the creation of the future network. The focus is not only on radio, not only on application, but transport in the middle, which needs to be extremely focused, because that is where the choking point will be. Therefore, core and transport innovation is right in the center. I am very proud to see that our strategic partner is focusing on those areas, because this industry has been focusing on radio speed, the billing system, and others. What we have left out is core and transport, and modernization of the back-end infrastructure, which allows us to come closer to

Yogesh Malik, CTO, VEON Group

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the customer.

Could you talk about the collaboration with ZTE on Pan 5G?

ZTE has been our trusted and strategic partner. Actually, we have gone a long way in virtualization with ZTE. We have managed to virtualize network functions, EPC and SDM. We have managed to go for IMS. We have managed to do messaging. All these are on an open platform. I think that is why I like the ZTE architecture a lot. Now having said that, a challenge now is how to bring 4G to 5G in the investment case so that we cannot only justify connected society but we can also bring on the new purpose. In addition, I think that is where we are working very well with ZTE. My focus is going to be on the super cities. I want every urban city to become a super city and to be able to connect the society in a way so that we are more intelligent and data can help us make our lives better.

Where do you see the future of Pan 5G including 5G connection, bearing, services, and terminals?

We are on a great journey. 5G or Pan 5G is

a new environment but it is already available today. What we have done in velcom together with our partner ZTE is exactly to start this today because we are starting at the core. Network slicing, for instance, brings new services. It is starting with the core. For the radio part, we have already developed 4G quite further; and 5G will help us have a better system here. In the end, core network and the radio part connected with a very capable transport network have to be orchestrated. This will be the all of it because we will not be able to handle it any longer through people management. We have to do it in a fully automated way. This journey has started already. NB-IoT is the first service where we have done network slicing—we have put it onto a fully virtualized environment. Now of course it’s the orchestration which will be next. We are excited to follow with ZTE on this journey.

Could you talk about the cooperation with ZTE on Pan 5G?

The cooperation of ZTE and velcom started about three years ago. The first part was software-defined radio, which means we are able to move towards 5G, 6G or whatever is coming. The next part was core network virtualization, swapping to a fully virtualized network, and the last part for us is connectivity. Transport is at the moment ongoing and again it is the partnership of ZTE with velcom. This is bringing SDN capability to enable a fast network, which has all the capabilities to be flexible enough and to deal with the demand of many different service clouds in the future. We have chosen a partner because, for our market, it is a perfect fit to push things early to the edge of technology.

Christian Laque, Senior Director for Technology, velcom

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What do think of ZTE’s Pan 5G innovations and future collaborations?

ZTE is a partner with whom we are dealing very well on this journey towards Pan 5G. In several elements ZTE has shown they are really advanced. For instance, the virtualization. We believed they were able to do it well and they delivered together with us the first fully virtualized core network. Things that we are now planning together are I think a very good symbol of what is possible to do in a partnership. ZTE is showing in some elements like orchestration and open stack that they are so much more advanced that I think 5G is tangible very soon. I hope next year that we are nearly able to have an end-to-end complete solution. Of course there are many more partners involved. However, ZTE is, I think in the industry, one of the big players that will push it forward, and I am very proud that we are here already, in the country of Belarus, pushing substantial things towards 5G.

Where do you see the future for Pan 5G including 5G connection, bearing, services, and terminals?

As an operator, it is very important to have end-to-end 5G solutions. This begins in the radio part, includes transmission, core network and the service

platforms. 5G will have several dimensions: very high capacity, very high data speeds, low latency, and very high reliability. We have to plan where we implement which functions with which target KPIs. This means that we have to do it very carefully and we need providers like ZTE to help us to develop solutions together.

Could you talk about the cooperation with ZTE on Pan 5G?

We have been working with ZTE for more than 8

Mario Paier, Head of Network Strategy and Technology, Hutchison Drei Austria

ZTE

15JUN 2018

years now. We started with 3G and implemented full 3G coverage in Austria. Then we upgraded the whole network to 4G. In the meantime, we have 85 percent of the traffic on 4G. The next step will be 5G. We have already started to implement first trials with pre-5G Massive MIMO.

What do you think of ZTE’s 5G innovations and future collaborations?

I think ZTE is quite strong in 5G development. ZTE was the first to provide solutions for Massive

MIMO. One and a half year ago in Austria, we already tested Massive MIMO. Also in the core network, ZTE is quite strong with architectures and solutions for telecom platforms. We think it is a good way to collaborate with ZTE to develop solutions together.

Where do you see the future for Pan 5G including 5G connection, bearing, services, and terminals?

The future 5G is really simple. It is a massive enabler. So in terms of taking the industry forward and converging a number of other aspects of multiple industries, 5G is going to be the biggest enabler of technology to be paired up with practical execution within the environments where we are working. 5G allows so many things to take place that were never able to be done in the traditional GSM network. As a result, 5G will liberate the markets where it is launched at speeds that we have never seen before. I do not mean network speeds. I mean speeds of innovation, speeds of deployment, speeds of being able to get results for many of the challenges we are experiencing globally at the moment. It is industry-agnostic in a lot of respects as an enabler that goes through multiple facets from health to automation to automobiles and AI.

Douglas Craigie Stevenson, COO, Cell C

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

16JUN 2018

VIP Voices

It allows the backbone to be the connector of everything and it will become synonymous with the way people live and go forward.

Could you talk about the cooperation with ZTE on Pan 5G?

ZTE as a strategic partner with us has been exceptional in terms of looking at collaboration and roadmaps towards being able to get us onto 5G evolution. We’ll look at what we will do with ZTE going forward in terms of understanding the 5G roadmap, developing certain strategies around 5G and how we operate within the 5G environment.

What do you think of ZTE’s 5G innovations and future collaborations?

When we look at ZTE’s offerings at MWC, it is very exciting to see that ZTE is at the forefront of the 5G roadmap. They are highly competitive as a 5G infrastructure provider. They understand where the customers’ ambitions lie in terms of making use of technologies, and they understand clearly how to get 5G working and operational in a highly competitive environment with other network infrastructure suppliers.

Where do you see the future for pan-5G including 5G connection, bearing, services, and terminals?

Everyone is waiting for the arrival of 5G, which might be the game changer in the telecom industry. First, I think we will see some real results after 2022 because it takes some time in terms of the process of standardization and the process of preparing 5G equipment. Most importantly, we have to prepare enough devices for the market because looking at the technology from the client side, the clients need to have proper devices, good ecosystem including many application services and some real benefits that will be useful in their daily life. I believe 5G services will be widely available in Europe, US, Russia and most countries after 2022. Personally, I think 2025 would be the turning point for 5G because we will see the growth of the replacement of 4G devices by 5G devices. The telecom ecosystem takes time to go through the full cycle to implement new technology, then implement new devices and replace it from a customer base.

Could you talk about the cooperation with ZTE on Pan 5G?

A new technology opens the door for cooperating with many partners. In the past , we could do our services all alone without relying on partnerships. Nowadays, we believe i t is completely impossible to be successful in a growing, and especially

Valery Ermakov, Vice-President, Rostelecom

ZTE

17JUN 2018

complex market. Our clients require very complicated services, which include different services from many fields. For this reason, the abil i ty to build up a strong partnership is a key advantage for many companies. As a telecom operator, we believe our partnership with ZTE is a really good step in the right direction in terms of creating a bright future for both businesses and our customers.

What do you think of ZTE’s 5G innovations and future collaborations?

I believe it is impossible to see our future without the cooperation with the most advanced vendors in the world. In my view, Chinese vendors are one of the most advanced vendors with their state of the art equipment, devices and their investment into R&D. ZTE is one of them. We would like to rely on our partnership with ZTE to penetrate into different segments of the economy to create new business cases and new partnerships with different industries and to be able to deliver good and reliable services for our clients.

How is the cooperation between NCell and ZTE?

For Ncell, ZTE is a strategic and old partner. ZTE has been there since the inception of Ncell. We worked together on the deployment of 4G. This was the first 4G in the eastern region of Nepal. At the same time, we deployed the first HSS, a virtualized platform. It has been up and running for the last three to four months. So in terms of the roadmap and architecture, we are working very closely with ZTE’s research and development team. We are actually proceeding with them on the roadmap—how we are going to grow from 3G to 4G and onwards from 4G to 5G.

Where do you see the future cooperation on pre-5G and 5G between Ncell and ZTE?

I think when I look at the architecture; the way ZTE is developing is very promising and is in accordance with the standards that need to be followed. The development is going on. The only challenge we see is the commercialization feasibility to go beyond 4G or 4.5G. From the cooperation perspective, we are trying to develop the technologies together and getting to a level to be ready for 4G and beyond. 4G is just recently new and the Nepal market requires a little bit more development itself. I would say that the journey is a bit slow; yet at the same time I am seeing a lot of development and cooperation with ZTE.

Muhammad Adeel Israr, CTO, Ncell

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

18JUN 2018

Expert View

t MWC 2018, I had the honor to participate in a panel discussion titled “Do 5G Business Cases Depend More on Core or Edge Upgrades”. The panel featured an impressive group

of representatives from across the global telecom industry who were split into teams to advocate one side over another. I was a proud member of “Team Core,” and focused on the importance of a 5G core in terms of its ability to deliver, tailored “slices” of the network to enterprise customers, offering significant growth prospects for network operators offering connected services such as IoT and M2M. Although it was a lively and sometimes heated debate it did addresses the significant change in Networks as we know that 5G will bring.

Among other things, 5G will provide dramatically faster speeds, and thus, greater overall bandwidth, which sounds great for wireless devices. But mobile networks don’t exist by themselves. The new 5G network and the devices that use it will need a network that supports them on the back end so that the data they need and the computing services they require can be available with as little latency as possible. That low-latency requirement will be more insistent than ever as services like self-driving transports will need to transfer data almost instantly in order to do their jobs.

Latency can be thought of as a network delay, but it’s really caused by several factors, the most basic of which is the speed of light in glass fiber. The longer the distance a data packet has to travel on a network, the longer it’ll take to get to its destination. While it’s still measured in tiny fractions of a second, those fractions add up as other factors join in. So does the time it takes a server and whatever application or database in running to find the information you need and send it back to you. As the network gets busier, and the network infrastructure becomes less able to cope with the traffic, latency increases. This is especially true with servers as they become overloaded.

Because communicating with a centralized computing and data repository takes time, the only way to save time (i.e. decrease latency) is to avoid using that centralized repository—which means moving big chunks of your network’s computing power to the edge of the network. The result is something called “edge computing,” with architectures referred to as “edge cloud computing,” which, in turn, uses things called “cloudlets” or sometimes called “fog computing.” A key driver is mobile computing, which necessarily uses data at the edge.

The edge of the network is the part that’s closer to the ultimate user. By moving the data to the edge of the network, you cut down on delays in two ways: First is that you reduce the distance between the user of the

in 5G Core vs. Edge

By Tommy Bjorkberg

Tommy BjorkbergDirector of CTO Group, ZTE

A

ZTE

19JUN 2018

data and the place where it’s stored (the repository), which reduces the time it takes data to move back and forth. Second, by keeping just the required data near the user, you’re also reducing the amount of data that the server has to handle, which also speeds things up.

While it’s common to assume that cloud and edge computing are competing approaches, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the concepts. Edge computing speaks to a computing topology that places content, computing and processing closer to the user/things or “edge” of the networking. Cloud is a system where technology services are delivered using internet technologies, but it does not dictate centralized or decentralized service delivery. When implemented together, cloud is used to create the service-oriented model and edge computing offers a delivery style that allows for executions of disconnected aspects of cloud service.

Computing at the edge with user devices included are already playing important roles. Edge analytics is a rapidly growing field to process and make use of local traffic in ms latencies. There is also a broad set of new requirements coming from 5G use cases such as tactile internet, real-time video traffic optimization etc. Various industry initiatives are creating environments where application programs such as analytics are easily pluggable into the open mobile edge cloud. Furthermore, additional resources obtained from edge networks that are time-critical and client-centric tasks should be placed in close proximity to the users.

5G systems are designed so that networks can be sliced on an as-a-service basis, with services scaled up and down quickly and easily and each slice can be customized to provide the elements necessary for the architecture it requires. For example, 10 percent of a network’s resources can be reserved exclusively for IoT devices, however this requires new 5G core built on service based architecture.

With 5G, operators need to consider both devices: the sender, and the end device. A good example is for M2M and IoT applications where the battery life of the device needs to be considered. An operator can customize the network for a low-power application so

battery life can be measured in months or even years in some cases. The 5G era will bring to life amazing use cases, mostly encompassing mobile broadband, massive IoT, and mission-critical IoT. Network slicing offers better business agility, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. The network slicing as-a-service model lets network operators choose the characteristics they need per slice to reach 5G capabilities, such as less latency with more throughput, connection density, spectrum efficiency, traffic capacity, and network efficiency. This helps increase business model efficiencies in how they create products and services as well as improve the customer experience.

Additionally, each slice is isolated and comprises the device, access, transport, and core network, thereby increasing reliability and security. Also, changes and additions to a slice can be made without having to consider the effects across the rest of the network. This saves time, effort, and cost because it takes away the need to re-engineer the whole network with individual slice changes.

Networks are moving away from a one-size-fits-all model and toward a model where unnecessary functionality is removed and new technologies can be added where needed. Network slicing combines a common underlying infrastructure where resources can be divided, shared, and optimized. This is a more cost-effective use of the resources and helps reduce the total cost of ownership.

Ultimately, network slicing will allow IT to achieve more at a lower cost. Individual timelines, services, and pricing can be created and still retain the benefit from the common infrastructure. At the end of the day, network slicing will likely be invisible to the typical end user, but will allow network operators to be more nimble, more flexible, and ultimately cost-effective, which should enable a better user experience for everyone.

This in my view is the main reason why in the initial stages of 5G the core network and core network capabilities will be more important than the edge, but over time as 5G matures and we start seeing more and more new innovative and localised services, the importance will over time shift towards the edge.

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

20JUN 2018

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

ptical transport network (OTN) featuring high bandwidth, low latency, and long-distance transmission

provides quality bearers for global operator networks. Using revolutionary technologies such as coherent communications, polarization multiplexing, and soft-decision error correction, 100G transport has quickly replaced 40G transmission and become a new-generation of long-life technology. 100G has been deployed on a large scale for nearly five years.

With the rapid development of 5G, big video, and high-performance private line services, as well as the growing demands for IDC interconnection brought by cloud networks, the demands for higher optical network bandwidth are witnessing an exponential growth. Accordingly, beyond-100G coherent transport represented by single-carrier 200G/400G has become a

hot topic. Beyond-100G uses high-order QAM modulation, constellation shaping (including probabilistic shaping), and nonlinear compensation for signal processing, uses low-loss large-effective-area fiber, low noise amplifiers, and distributed Raman amplifiers to improve transmission performance, and uses optical integration including Silicon Photonics (SiPh) integration, Indium Phosphide (InP) integration, optical hybrid integration, hybrid optoelectronic integration, and digital-to-analog conversion with high sampling rate and high resolution to improve energy efficiency. The objective is to settle the conflicts between spectral efficiency and transmission distances and between network performance and energy efficiency for large-scale commercial use of beyond-100G.

Commercial Deployment

In 2016, China Unicom carried out

Trends and Key Technologies of

Beyond-100G

Beyond-100G

O

Wang Taili

Chief Engineer of OTN Product Planning, ZTE

By Wang Taili

ZTE

21JUN 2018

400G

a laboratory test on the transmission performance of beyond-100G using new optical fibers, and deployed trial sites on the existing network for verification. In 2017, China Mobile conducted laboratory tests to verify transmission functions and performance of single-carrier 400G, preparing for subsequent standards formulation and commercial deployment. In January 2018, American telecom operator Verizon completed a 400G field trial by establishing connections between core routers for 400GE services over its OTN.

The year 2018 is crucial for launching beyond-100G and will be followed by sustained high growth. Cignal Al, an analyst firm, forecasts that beyond-100G will take nearly a quarter share of OTN bandwidth market by 2020. Another well-known consulting firm, OVUM, predicts that beyond-100G market will account for over one-third of the whole OTN market in 2022.

Progress of Standardization

The commercial availability of OTN is inseparable from healthy development of the

industrial chain. The beyond-100G standards are being perfected. Both the ITU-T G.709 (OTUCn) and IEEE 802.3bs (200GE/400GE) standards have been released. The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has launched the flex coherent DWDM transmission framework and is developing the 400G ZR standards for short-haul DCI as well as TROSA and HB-CDM standards for high-speed optical devices and interfaces.

Application Scenarios

Beyond-100G OTN is a total solution for multiple application scenarios involving long-haul, MAN, and short-haul interconnection. ZTE has taken a lead in drafting the Flex Coherent DWDM Transmission Framework that provides a comprehensive analysis of various application specifications. The 400G application modes are listed in Table 1.

It can be seen from the table that transmission distance and spectral efficiency (channel spacing/number of carriers) conflict with each other. Major concerns for beyond-100G in different application scenarios are balancing transmission

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

22JUN 2018

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

bandwidth and distance or achieving the optimal transmission distance and the optimal spectral efficiency respectively by limiting the bandwidth and shortening transmission distance.

Key Technologies

Beyond-100G also faces technical challenges such as channel modulation, line transmission and product integration and packaging.

Channel Modulation

Baud rate is the basic means to increase single-channel transport rates from 32G baud in the 100G era to 64G baud in the 400G era and 96G/128G baud in the future 800G era. The increase in baud rate can reduce the number of optical components. However, the baud rate increase is limited by the bandwidth of modulators/drivers and receivers and the manufacturing level of components. In addition, simply increasing the baud rate cannot increase spectral efficiency or total transmission capacity.

High-order QAM can increase spectral efficiency and transmission capacity, but requires narrower linewidth lasers and better linear optoelectronic components. Moreover, closer arrangement of constellation diagrams in high-order modulation results in shorter transmission distance.

As for probabilistic shaping, constellation probability in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) system gets close to Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution (a shaping gain of 1.53 dB per dimension can be achieved in ideal conditions). High redundancy ratio, optimized soft-decision error correction, probabilistic shaping, and optimized constellation arrangement that increases the Euclidean distance, are used to increase the transmission distance of high-order QAM and expand the coverage of beyond-100G applications.

Line Transmission

Compared with the ever-changing development of channel modulation, line transmission has developed at a relatively slow pace. New fibers

Table 1. 400G application modes.

Modulation Mode Channel Bandwidth (400G)

Number of Carriers

Application Scenario

LH Metro Access

DP-QPSK 150 GHz 2 √

DP-8QAM 100 GHz 2 √ √

DP-16QAM 75 GHz 2 √

DP-16QAM 75 GHz 1 √ √

DP-32QAM 62.5 GHz 1 √ √

DP-64QAM 50 GHz 1 √

ZTE

23JUN 2018

SiPh based Die and optical components are small in size, highly integrated and pluggable optical modules can be made.

The OIF is developing IC-TROSA standards for packaging. Type-A standards are specified for the SiPh technology that integrate modulators, drivers and receivers. Type-B standards are defined for the InP technology, integrating lasers, modulators, drivers and receivers. Leveraging the advantage of non-hermetic packaging, SiPh enables BGA packaging, while the InP technology can integrate optical components into a Goldbox.

Conclusion

The explosive growth of bandwidth is beyond imagination. The industry was discussing 100G yesterday, but today it has started to study beyond-100G. Beyond-100G transport brings both challenges and opportunities. In general, standards, applications, trials and technical implementations all help to accelerate the deployment of beyond-100G, which will open a new chapter in optical communications.

(such as G.654E) with low loss and large effective area can reduce line loss and increase the incident optical power, thus reducing the number of electrical repeaters. On the equipment side, low-noise optical amplifiers are used to improve transmission performance, and the commercial deployment of distributed Raman amplifiers are accelerated. These technical means are adopted to ensure engineering safety and reduce maintenance difficulities of Raman amplifiers and will play a more significant role in extending transmission distance.

Product Integration and Packaging

Optical components, which are key to the beyond-100G technology, are developed from traditional discrete devices (such as optical sources, modulators, and integrated receivers) to integrated optical devices based on InP and SiPh technologies. With the group III-V elements, InP can be used for lasers and other active gain devices. SiPh compatible with the CMOS technology has a great potential for large-scale and low-cost production, but faces the challenge of implementing an active gain structure. As InP and

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

24JUN 2018

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

ith the increasing demand for video traffic, cloud computing and mobile data, the optical

network bandwidth is increasing at a rate of about 2 dB per year. High-speed coherent optical communication is developing rapidly. It took only five years for the 100G coherent optical single-carrier communication system to develop from laboratories to actual layout and use in the existing network. As single-carrier 100G signal transmission has been widely used, there is a pressing need for single-carrier 400G signal transmission.

Unlike single-carrier 100G transmission where polarization-multiplexed quadrature phase shift keying (PM-QPSK) is commonly used, single-carrier 400G transmission will have different options due to certain limitations and challenges it may face. If single-carrier 400G transmission follows

the 100G system by still using PM-QPSK modulation that is based on digital signal processing, its baud rate will reach 128 Gbaud, but its frequency offset efficiency can only reach 2 bit/s/Hz. The communication capacity cannot be effectively increased; therefore, a product developed this way is unattractive. For the 400G system, a more advanced modulation mode is needed to improve spectrum efficiency and transmission capacity. In this way, the baud rate required by signals will be reduced, and so will the bandwidth requirements of devices. For example, if 64QAM is used, the necessary baud rate is only about 44 Gbaud. However, advanced QAM requires a higher signal-to-noise ratio, which results in limited transmission distance and cannot meet the requirement of long-haul transmission. The advanced modulation optimization technologies that have been researched including probabilistic shaping can greatly extend the transmission distance because they

Yu JianjunChief Scientist at ZTE US Optical Lab

By Yu Jianjun

New Technologies for Single-Carrier

400G Transmission

W

ZTE

25JUN 2018

change the probability distribution of signals and therefore provide a transmission capacity that is closer to the Shannon limit.

Using High Baud Rates to Improve Single-Channel Transmission Rates

Based on past research, increasing the baud rate is an effective and popular way to increase the transmission rate of each channel. A high baud rate can achieve high-speed transmission of a single channel, reduce the number of channels and optical components, and thereby reduce costs. ZTE has demonstrated the generation of 128.8 Gbaud PM-QPSK signals and their long-haul terrestrial transmission through optical fibers, where the transmission distance can reach tens of thousands of kilometers. Recently, ZTE has also demonstrated the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission of 128 Gbaud PM-16QAM optical signals. For these solutions, the two main factors that limit system performance are modulation bandwidth limitation, and non-linear loss that is introduced by electro-optical devices for signal modulation and detection. ZTE can use advanced digital signal processor algorithms to solve these limiting factors at the sending and receiving ends, including the pre-/post-equalization compensation algorithm at the sending and receiving ends.

Using Advanced QAM to Increase Signal Rates and Spectrum Efficiency

Ultra-high-speed signal transmission can be achieved by using a high baud rate and advanced QAM. Advanced QAM can reduce the baud rate and increase spectrum efficiency. However, coherent detection by using advanced QAM requires more sophisticated digital signal processing technologies, and signal detection by using advanced QAM requires optoelectronic devices with a higher signal-to-noise ratio, narrower laser linewidth, and better linearity. The non-linearity caused by optoelectronic devices and optical fibers can also be compensated by using digital signal processing. In 2017, ZTE first achieved the generation and coherent detection of 400G PM-256QAM signals. At present, the most advanced QAM mode in the world is 4096QAM, but its rate is only about 50 Gb/s.

Using New Optical Fiber and Amplification to Extend Transmission Distance

The transmission of optical signals in optical fibers is affected by dispersion, loss and nonlinearity. In the coherent optical communication system, fiber dispersion is no longer a major issue since it can be effectively compensated by using digital signal processing. The loss of C-band signals in standard

400G400G

400G

400G

400G

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

26JUN 2018

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

single-mode optical fibers is about 0.2 dB/km, so the total loss after fiber transmission over 100 km is about 20 dB. To reduce loss and improve the signal-to-noise ratio after the transmission, a new ultra low loss fiber (ULLF) has been introduced. Now, the minimum loss of ULLF can be about 0.14 dB/km, so the total loss after the transmission over 100 km is only about 13 dB, which is 6 dB less than that of standard single-mode optical fibers. Moreover, increasing the aperture of an optical fiber can reduce both the optical power per unit area and the non-linear effect in the fiber. Currently, the aperture of an optical fiber can exceed 150 square micrometers. Different from centralized amplification of EDFA, Raman amplification can reduce the optical power of signals in fibers (at places near the EDFA) and thus reduce the non-linear effect in optical fibers. Now, the records of long-haul terrestrial transmission are basically all achieved through Raman amplification. If the digital signal-processing algorithm is used at the receiving end, the impact of the non-linear effect in optical fibers will be further reduced. However, the current complicated algorithm is basically not applicable and needs to be further researched.

Using Probabilistic Shaping to Achieve Long-Haul Transmission

Probabilistic shaping (PS) is the most popular digital signal processing algorithm used in the recent two years. Since the birth of the information theory, narrowing the gap between the communication system capacity and the Shannon limit has become an eternal topic. In the PS constellation diagram, constellation

points are equally spaced, but each has a different probability. The PS technology is a very important method in the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Transmission power can be reduced by making symbols with lower energy appearing more frequently than those with high energy. Though the non-uniform distribution reduces the entropy output by the transmitter and decreases the average bits (or bit rates), the saved energy is sufficient to compensate for the loss of bit rates. In addition, by increasing the Euclidean distance under fixed power, the PS technology also increases noise immunity of the system.

For a given average bit rate or fixed transmission entropy, the optimal distribution of constellation points that can minimize the average transmission energy is the Maxwell Boltzmann distribution, which can achieve the maximum information rate in the AWGN channel. In principle, when constellation points comply with the Maxwell Boltzmann distribution, a 1.53 dB shaping gain (or sensitivity gain) can be achieved in each dimension. The non-uniform signal generation mechanism can be achieved by mapping simple variable-length prefixes.

Fig. 1 shows four probability distributions of PS-64QAM, where the histogram height indicates the probability of modulation symbols. As probabilistic shaping becomes more and more significant from (a) to (d) in Fig. 1, the entropy becomes smaller and smaller, which is 5.73 bits/symbol, 5.23 bits/symbol, 4.60 bits/symbol and 4.13 bits/symbol in the four figures respectively.

ZTE Using New Technologies to Create a 400G

Fig. 1. Different probability distributions of PS-64QAM.

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27JUN 2018

PM-64QAM signals in eight channels (under the channel spacing of 50 GHz). Table 1 summarizes the experimental results that ZTE got by using or not using the two different PS technologies respectively. Under the 5×10-2 SD-FEC threshold, signal transmission over 3200 km can be achieved by using both PS technologies. However, if no PS technology is used, the maximum transmission distance is 2000 km. It can be seen that the transmission distance is extended by more than 60% after the PS technology is used.

Conclusion

The 400G high-baud-rate advanced modulation coherent communication technologies based on digital signal processing are developing rapidly. By using these advanced technologies, ZTE has achieved the transmission records of 10,000 km transmission of 400G QPSK signals, 6,000 km transmission of 16QAM signals, and 3,000 km transmission of 64QAM signals. In these transmission systems, the highest baud rate of transmitted signals can reach 128.8 Gbaud, and advanced QAM has achieved 400G 256QAM signal modulation. ZTE used small-loss large-aperture optical fibers, advanced devices such as Raman amplifiers as well as PS technology and coherent detection based on advanced digital signal processing to effectively extend the transmission distance.

Long-Haul Transmission Record

The PS technology can greatly extend transmission distance. Recently, ZTE, together with several leading device and optical fiber companies overseas, successfully transmitted the 66 Gbaud PS-16QAM 400 Gb/s signals over more than 6000 km under the 75 GHz channel spacing on 100 km amplification spacing, refreshing the record of terrestrial transmission distance. The system adopts a series of new technologies and devices, including the high-sensitivity probabilistic shaping and pre-/post-equalization coherent detection technologies developed by ZTE, the low-power and small-size high-bandwidth coherent drive modulation (HB-CDM) module made by NeoPhotonics, and the large-aperture low-loss TeraWave™ optical fiber manufactured by OFS. In this experiment, the transmission distance of single-carrier 506 Gb/s PDM-16QAM signals that are probabilistically shaped exceeds 6000 km under the channel spacing of 75 GHz on 100 km spans, and the spectrum efficiency of the line exceeds 5.3 b/s/Hz. Compared with the case where no PS technology is used, the transmission distance is extended by more than 40%.

The PS technology is more effective for advanced QAM than that for low-level QAM. ZTE also uses this technology to achieve long-haul transmission of 400G 64QAM signals. In the experiment, ZTE transmitted 528 Gb/s single-carrier

Table 1. Transmission results.

Modulation Mode

Baud Rate (Gbaud)

Total Rate (Gb/s)(Excluding the PS overhead)

OSNR Tolerance (dB)

(Single channel)

WDM Transmission

Distance (Raman + large-aperture optical

fiber)

64QAM 44 528 25.9 2000 km

64QAM (PS 5.75)

46.272 532 24.8 3200 km

64QAM (PS 5.5)

48.125 529 22.4 3200 km

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

28JUN 2018

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

Heralding the Beyond-100G Era

he next three to five years will be a period of rapid development of broadband networks in China.

As a variety of new services gradually mature and are widely deployed, the demand for network bandwidth will grow exponentially. Due to the surging bandwidth growth, the existing 100G OTN capacity has become increasingly saturated. With the development of beyond-100G OTN technologies, it has become an inevitable trend to deploy the beyond-100G OTN.

Big Video Brings a Surge in Bandwidth Demand

China is now in the early development stage of big video services represented by 4K. The bandwidth demand at the MAN core layer will be greater than 6 Tbps. It is estimated that by 2019 to 2020, the bandwidth

demand at the MAN core layer will be greater than 12 Tbps, so a single 100G OTN plane can no longer meet the requirement of big video development. It is therefore imminent to increase the speed of OTN.

5G Era Requires Extreme High-Speed Pipelines

Wireless services are one of major business sectors of operators. It is estimated that 5G commercial trial will begin in 2020. Compared with the 4G era, it is generally agreed in the industry that the bandwidth demand in the 5G era will increase 100 to 1000 fold. Considering the unified transport of wireline and wireless networks in the 5G era, the MAN convergence layer will require multiple 100 Gbps channels, and the MAN core layer will even require a bandwidth of more than 10 Tbps. It can be said that 5G development will bring another round of explosive bandwidth growth. It is a general trend to deploy beyond-100G OTN at both the MAN

By Shi Kai

Prospects of ZTE’sBeyond-100G OTN

Transport

Beyond-100G OTN Transport

T

Shi Kai

BN Product Planning Manager, ZTE

ZTE

29JUN 2018

core and backbone layers.

IDC Interconnection Accelerates the Arrival of Beyond-100G Era

However, with the arrival of the cloud network era, data centers will become core carriers of future telecom networks. The rapid expansion of IDCs brings huge pressure to bandwidth for direct connection. Now the typical output rate of core IDCs is 100 GE, and it will be escalated to 400 GE in the future. The 100G OTN system in the existing network consumes enormous resources. Therefore, it is imperative to use beyond-100G OTN to build high-speed interconnection channels to meet the demands for high DCI bandwidth and low latency.

This is the reason why major operators worldwide are focusing on beyond-100G technologies. In 2017, China Mobile first introduced the 200G OTN model in its provincial-level concentrated purchase and actively promoted the commercial deployment. Compared with 100G OTN, 200G OTN can provide larger transmission bandwidth, support future development of big video and 5G services, and reduce the unit power consumption by 40% to 50%, thereby helping operators solve the conflict between bandwidth needs and power consumption. At present, 200G OTN has been commercially deployed in many Chinese provinces, and the transmission capacity has continually increased. With the maturity of the entire industry chain and key technologies, a new ultra-wide, green, and easy-to-use OTN era has arrived.

Leading Beyond-100G OTN Forward

ZTE has been committed to the design, research and development of WDM/OTN products. From 2.5G WDM to new-generation beyond-100G OTN, ZTE has been at the forefront of developing optical transport products. In terms of OTN core competitiveness, ZTE North America R&D Institute focuses on researching cutting-edge OTN technologies, with a number of core algorithms and technologies acknowledged as international patents. ZTE has made significant

progress in improving transmission capacity, reducing power consumption and enhancing integration, and has secured a leading position in the industry. Its self-developed 16 nm chips and 100G/beyond-100G optical modules have been put into commercial use, helping operators address their practical deployment issues.

Compared with 100G OTN, ZTE’s beyond-100G OTN uses industry-leading key technologies to considerably improve system performance that can meet operator needs for long-term evolution.

Polarization-Multiplexed High-Order Phase Modulation Improves Spectrum Efficiency

ZTE’s beyond-100G OTN uses various high-performance modulation techniques such as PM-16QAM and PM-8QAM and can double spectrum efficiency compared with 100G OTN. The transmission capacity of a single optical fiber increases from 8 Tbps to 20 Tbps or above. This significantly promote the rapid growth of broadband business.

Advanced FEC Algorithm and Pre-Compensation Increase Greatly Transmission Distance

The key to commercial beyond-100G OTN is to increase transmission distance. ZTE has developed the FEC algorithm that has the best error correction capability in the industry, and its transmission capability is 1 dB larger than the industry level. ZTE North America R&D Institute has also proposed several pre-compensation technologies such as narrowband

Beyond-100G OTN Transport

100G OTN

ZTE

7SEP 2016

ZTE

30JUN 2018

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

filter compensation and non-linear compensation, which can greatly improve transmission capability of beyond-100G OTN. When combined with hybrid amplifiers and new optical fibers, beyond-100G OTN can double transmission distance. This basically meets transmission needs in metrapolitan area or provincial backbone networks.

Silicon-Photonics Integration and ZTE-Developed AISC Chip Usher in a Green Beyond-100G OTN Era

Energy saving is a major concern of operators for reducing Opex. To achieve highly-integrated optical modules, ZTE uses the industry-leading silicon-photonics integration technology to integrate DSP, ADC/DAC, laser and driver on the same silicon base. This greatly reduces the size and power consumption of beyond-100G optical modules. ZTE has rolled out its newest beyond-100G OTN that uses the industry-leading 16 nm chip technology to considerbly improve the functions of a single chip and save power by 50%. Moreover, ZTE has completed commercial deployment of 200G/400G OTN and laboratory verification of 800G/1T transport rates, and has repeatedly refreshed the transmission records of beyond-100G OTN.

ZTE’s Global Practice of Beyond-100G

ZTE’s beyond-100G OTN has been extensively

deployed around the globe and received wide recognition from users at home and abroad. According to the latest OVUM report, ZTE has established a solid No. 2 position in the market share of both global optical and OTN switched networks (Fig. 1).

ZTE has been involved in almost all commercial beyond-100G OTN projects of China Mobile. With large-scale applications in Zhejiang, Hunan, Anhui, and Henan provinces of China, ZTE has built extreme high-speed optical networks for China Mobile to support big video, 5G and IDC interconnection.

In 2016, ZTE worked with TMA to successfully deploy 400G OTN in Austria’s existing network. They increased the capacity of a single optical fiber to over 20 Tbps and achieved a transmission distance of 475 km over the hybrid 10G/100G/400G network, setting again a new world record. In 2017, ZTE cooperated with Ture, Thailand’s largest full-service operator, to build the world’s first commercial WDM automatic switched optical network (WASON) based on 200G/400G flexible grids. ZTE won more than 75% of the bid for building new backbone networks. The diamond- and bronze-level WASON guarantees high system availability while increasing capacity.

ZTE always adheres to its business philosophy of serving with dedication and being committed to customers. The company looks forward to cooperating with global operators in building extreme high-speed ultra-wide beyond-100G OTN.

（ Global optical network market） （OTN switched network market）

Fig. 1. Market Share of beyond-100G OTN.

4Q16-3Q17: $14.9bn market 4Q16-3Q17: $5.9bn market

ZTE

31JUN 2018

SDN: From Theory to Reality

t present, the technological evolution and application innovation of software-defined networking

(SDN) are accelerating and the industry is becoming increasingly vibrant. Equipment vendors, operators and research institutions around the world are putting more efforts into the research of SDN. The SDN technology has moved from theoretical discussion to practical deployment and industrialization. While beyond-100G WDM/OTN networks are being deployed, how to apply SDN to them will be key to future market competition.

The reason why SDN has come into spotlight is that traditional closed networks cannot meet service innovation demands. With the emergence of various innovative applications, a network should support rapid deployment of new services. However, due to lack of

standards, open interfaces, and a heavy reliance on vendor products’ lifecycles, the existing networks can’t support rapid service deployment, thus hampering service innovation. Operators urgently need to extend SDN into their transport networks. SDN separates the control and data planes to enable logically centralized control and abstraction of the underlying infrastructure for applications, creating an open interfaces-based and programmable network that can respond to the fast changing business needs.

SDN-Based OTN Product

ZTE’s ZENIC SDON is an open, flexible, efficient, intelligent and programmable optical network solution with an architecture as shown in Fig. 1.

The architecture of ZENIC SDON consists of three planes: a programmable optical transport plane, a controller plane, and an application plane.

The optical transport plane is based

Creating an Open and Programmable Beyond-100G OTN with SDN

A

Li Qingle

SDON Marketing Manager, ZTE

By Li Qingle

ZTE

7SEP 2016

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32JUN 2018

Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

on a 100G or beyond-100G network. It has several programmability features: component programmability where the modulation, the number of subcarriers, and the spectrum width can be flexibly adjusted; node programmability where the switching granularity, type, and level for the nodes are programmable; and network programmability where not only network connection services (e.g. bandwidth size and type, transmission path and latency, and service quality and security level) but also the type, scale, and topology of the logical subnets that are created on the same physical network are all programmable.

The controller plane uses a hierarchical design (orchestration layer + domain control layer) to achieve centralized intelligent control of the network. It can also be flexibly extended to support multi-domain interoperability and unified management of the entire network.

As for the application plane, ZTE is committed to building an open platform. Customers can use application services developed by ZTE or develop the applications by themselves based on the open interfaces of the control layer, making service development and deployment faster.

The ZENIC SDON solution brings great value to the traditional optical networks by incorporating the SDN technology.

Differentiated Protection with SLA

A traditional optical network provides protection against a single link failure, and is not capable of automatic traffic rerouting upon multiple failures. However, the ZENIC SDON solution enables centralized control of entire network resources and automatic recovery from multiple failures. It supports automatic electrical layer scheduling based on the OTN electrical cross-connection, automatic optical layer scheduling based on the ROADM, and coordinated scheduling of the optical and electrical layers. The SLA policies can be defined based on specific service needs to improve service security.

On-Demand, Flexible Service Deployment

The ZENIC SDON solution provides on-demand services such as bandwidth on-demand (BoD), performance on-demand (PoD), and optimization on-demand (OoD), and supports fast service deployment for the L3, L2, L1, and L0 layers, reducing the service deployment time from days and hours to minutes and seconds and dramatically increasing resource utilization and service performance. The BoD provides real-time or scheduled bandwidth as needed to fully utilize the OTN pipeline resources and cope with bursting

Fig. 1. Architecture of ZENIC SDON.

Orchestrator (ZTE or 3rd-party)

EMS/NMSNetnumen

BSS/OSS

NETCONF

Restful Restful T-API

Cooperative controller (multi-vendor, multi-domain)

RESTCONF

Qx/SNMP

Traditional network Programmable optical network

Othermanufacturers’hierarchicalnetworks

WASONnetwork

BoD OVPN SLA

MLO DCI …

3rd-party applicationsZTE applications

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MLO DCI …

User controller

C-MPI

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OpenFlow/NETCONF/PCEP

Domain controller Other controllersDomain controller

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traffic. The PoD provides differentiated services to meet different latency, transmission quality, and SLA requirements. The OoD provides route optimization, traffic balancing, and online policy adjustment after a topology change.

Network Slicing (Optical VPN) for Fine Control

The innovative optical VPN (OVPN) solution provides enterprise clients with self-service virtual private network as well as higher level security guarantee. When the enterprise clients encounter faults on the leased networks, the OVPN automatically allocates additional network resources to ensure efficient communication, improving customer experience and reducing O&M workload. At the same time, the network slicing function can allocate network resources to different services, so as to optimize resource utilization while giving fine-grain control over bandwidth and latency.

Great Value from IP + Optical Synergy

The SDN-based IP/optical coordination solution enables pipeline resource pooling (the transport network being the resource pool) to satisfy the dynamic service requests from the IP layer. It has the following advantages: ● Resource pooling for reduced costs: The pipeline

resources are dynamically adjusted in real time according to traffic flows, increasing the network utilization rate from 20–30% to 60–80% and reducing Capex.

● Resource elasticity: The whole bearer network as a resource pool allows for automatic increase or decrease of the bandwidth based on the service demands.

● Resource visibility for quantitative investment: The resources of the whole bearer network can be quantified and counted. That visibility can be used to quantify the investment according to changes in resource requirements and the trend analysis, thus further reducing Capex.

● Network optimized with reduced latency: Based on an SDN architecture, a hierarchical SDN controller is introduced to automatically implement unified

planning and scheduling of resources across IP and optical networks for multi-layer optimal path selection. It supports cross-layer coordination and optimization, reduces the number of hops and latency, and enables pass-through operations when necessary to meet the requirements of ultra-low latency services such as 5G.

● Simplified O&M for improved efficiency: This solution supports functions such as one-click service launch, building any topology in an app, automated L0-L3 service provisioning with the provisioning time reduced from two weeks to two minutes, locating faults in a second with a multi-layer topology view, and automated service restoration.

● Coordinated protection for a robust network: The vPIPE platform shares all redundant resources, which can be provisioned on demand to complete fault recovery. For high-reliability services, the end-to-end 1+ 1 backup is provided. The backup paths avoid links that share the same shared risk link group (SRLG) as the primary paths to ensure complete separation between them.

Improved O&M Capabilities

The ZENIC SDON solution supports data sharing of network planning tools, maintenance tools, inspection tools, and evaluation and optimization tools to achieve online network planning and intelligent fiber cutover. Meanwhile, network-wide resources are optimized and defragmented for improved resource utilization and bearing capacity. Thus, automatic and simplified network management and operation can be enabled.

Summary

Since 2014, the SDN-based optical transport networks have gone from conceptual verification, laboratory testing to trials over existing networks, and are now moving towards commercialization. At the beginning of 2018, multiple operators at home and abroad began to deploy SDON solutions, advancing the evolution of the traditional optical transport networks towards programmable beyond-100G optical transport networks. It is believed that in the near future there will be widespread SDON deployments.

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7SEP 2016

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Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

ptical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) is the largest global

conference and exhibition for optical communications. At OFC 2018 , ZTE released the latest research results on forward error correction (FEC) for the 400G international standard, which was successfully selected as a post-deadline paper (PDP). Different from regular OFC papers, PDP papers focus more on recency and cutting-edge technologies. This is the first time that a research achievement led and completed by a Chinese enterprise in the optical communication algorithm category was

accepted as a PDP at OFC.The pluggable digital coherent

optical module, which uses single-carrier 400G, advanced DSP, and FEC algorithm to achieve a transmission distance of 90–120 km, is a key project of current international standard specifications, attracting major global manufacturers. Thanks to its technical accumulation, reasonable and predictive project planning ability, and superior implementation ability, ZTE stood out in the fierce competition.

Difficulties with FEC in Optical Communications

By adding certain redundant codes in

By Wang Weiming

ZTE’s Research Test on Ultra-

High-Speed FECLeads Development of the Latest 400G

FEC Standards

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Wang Weiming

BN Algorithm System Engineer, ZTE

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valid transmission data and using the FEC decoding algorithm at the receiving end, transmission distance and system performance can be greatly improved. Especially in the 100G and 400G high-speed optical transport systems, the signal loss caused by optical channels and components is more serious. FEC has therefore become a necessary and key technology for system equipment, and its performance has also become a key factor that affects OSNR tolerance, an important indicator for the bidding of optical communication systems.

For a high-speed optical transport system that serves a pipeline in the transmission, highly reliable transmission requires that the FEC technology should meet the requirement of ultra-low bit error rates (BERs) ( less than 10-15). This presents a big challenge to FEC design and verification.

Verification at Ultra-Low BERs

If assuming 10-bit error as a reliability criterion, it is necessary to collect 1016 bits of data to reach the 10-15 BER in the test. Put simply, take the comparison between a 12-core 2G workstation and a 100G verification system (40 FPGAs, each having a throughput of 2.5G) as an example. To verify the 10-15 BER, a 12-core workstation needs to work continually for 10 years, and even a large 100G FPGA disk arrays have to work for 30 hours.

Accuracy of Digital Noise

Accuracy of the verification system noise can also

affect the reliability of test results. Since it is hard to accurately control analog noise, digital noise becomes an essential means of verifying communication systems. In a high-speed optical transport system, the generation of digital noise requires ultra-high tailing accuracy and ultra-low BERs, and the implementation is quite difficult.

FEC Research and Verification for 400G

An advanced FEC solution that cascades staircase codes and Hamming codes has attracted widespread attention in the industry. Due to its clever structure design, the performance of staircase codes is superior to all FEC solutions in the G.975.1 standards. With less complex Hamming codes, the cascaded FEC solution provides good error-correction, low power consumption, and low latency, so it is quite suitable for large-capacity short-haul transmission scenarios.

Foreseeing the importance of the staircase code technology, ZTE’s algorithm team conducted targeted research and mastered its core algorithm. With its experience in proprietary soft decoding algorithm, ZTE implemented core algorithm through software within three months after the 400G FEC draft using cascaded staircase and Hamming codes were released.

Hardware implementation and verification is crucial to standard drafting, and relevant research results are time-limited. In the middle of January 2018, ZTE evaluated whether it was possible to achieve ultra-high-speed (200 Gbps) hardware implementation of the entire cascaded FEC solution based on an FPGA and the feasibility of related

400G

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Special Topic: Beyond-100G OTN

which caused its actual performance to be lower than what is expected in the standard. Through further research, the team located the root cause of this FEC error flare and provided the improvement idea and direction for eliminating the error flare to meet the expected performance. This achievement has played a key leading role in the final design of the FEC solution in the 400G international standard. Moreover, for the ultra-low-BER hardware test system based on digital noise, this research has first established a convergence rule that can guarantee highly-reliable ultra-low-BER tests and first applied this rule in the research on the FEC error floor and error flare under ultra-low BERs.

The paper was finally selected as an OFC PDP and received much attention in the industry, demonstrating ZTE’s leading position in cutting-edge technical innovation and product R&D of the global optical communication industry. As stated by Dr. Cai Yi during the OFC PDP presentation, “Since error correct codes were applied in the optical communication system in the late 1990s, the error code floor under ultra-low BERs has been a pending technical challenge for the academic community and the industry. The technological achievements made by ZTE this time have first helped to accomplish effective detection and research on error code performance under ultra-low-BERs . The fact that ZTE first identified the error flare problem with the cascaded staircase and Hamming code solution that might become the 400G international standard, and provided improvement direction as well, is the best case proving the advancement and practicality of this achievement. Even if the highest-speed detection system released before was adopted, the ultra-low-BER performance test and research that ZTE has completed within two weeks would take two years for completion, which could by no means satisfy the timeliness need for drafting international standards. The full set of ultra-low-BER performance research methods that ZTE has first created will also have a profound impact and significance to future technical research, development, and application in the industry.”

research and tests. Due to high complexity in hardware implementation of the cascaded FEC algorithm as well as the highly time-consuming ultra-low BER research tests, the evaluation result was that it was impossible to achieve hardware implementation on a regular basis.

When confronted with the challenge, ZTE’s wired algorithm team volunteered and made full effort to tackle the issue in February 2018. The team created a project plan in unit of hours and made best use of the recently developed 200G high-speed coding verification system. Through sufficient algorithms and iterations, the team worked out an FPGA block diagram on the fourth day of centralized research.

In addition to staircase and Hamming codec modules, the FPGA block diagram also includes complex functional modules such as block interleaver and convolution interleaver, as well as data source generation, noise generation, and error detection modules for tests. Through close cooperation between team members and day-and-night hard work in the entire month of February, the team finally determined the design of hardware implementation, compiled the FPGA code, and completed algorithm and hardware consistency verification.

ZTE’s Achievement Selected as a PDP

After FPGA development and verification were completed, the time left for test was very limited. At this point, the 200 Gbps FPGA verification platform that was developed by ZTE and made a record of the highest speed among similar systems in the world played an important role. In order to ensure data accuracy and obtain more data support, all project team members worked around the clock to collect data and make data analysis, and finally finished the technical report on the complete research results and submitted it to the OFC technical committee for review one hour before the OIF PDP deadline.

After testing the cascaded staircase and Hamming code solution on ZTE’s 200 Gbps FPGA verification platform, the team found an error flare in the solution that might be set as the 400G international standard,

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37JUN 2018

elefonica Mexico Movistar (TMM) is a subsidiary of the multinational operator Telefonica

in Mexico. Telefonica Group provides telecommunications services for 21 countries across the world and its services cover 14 countries in Latin America.

The mobile brand Movistar has been widely known since it entered Mexico in 2010 as it provides high-quality mobile communications services for Mexico telecommunications market. Now TMM has become the second largest mobile operator in Mexico providing mobile communications services for over 25 million users.

Challenges and Requirements of MAN

In recent years, with the popularization of 4K ultra-high-definition video and gradual introduction of

TELEFONICa MExICO MOvISTar: BOOSTING SErvICE DEvELOpMENT wITh ULTra-

hIGh-SpEED OpTICaL TraNSpOrT NETwOrk

By Ye Yongheng，Zhu Jinkui

such new services as 8K and VR/AR, mobile networks are evolving from 4G to 5G; the access rate per unit area is expected to increase by 1000 times; enterprise private line service granularities are changing to GE and larger ones. At the same time, TMM’s 4G networks have kept developing. The rapid growth of all the above services triggers a boom of bandwidth growth and brings huge challenges to network capacity and reliability.

The bandwidth bottleneck of the metro core aggregation network as a basic network will highly restrict future service expandability. Future metro DWDM networks will evolve towards ultra-high-speed 200 Gbps, 400 Gbps and even 1 Tbps. To cope with continuous expansion of 4G networks and huge challenges and fierce competition in the pending 5G, big data and big video era, TMM is in urgent need to upgrade its existing hybrid 10G/40G metro

Ye Yongheng

Zhu Jinkui

Optical Transport Product MKT Manager, ZTE

Optical Transport Product MKT Manager, ZTE

T

Success Stories

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7SEP 2016

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Success Stories

DWDM system by introducing new technologies and solutions to improve the metro core aggregation network capacity and performance. Already deployed for nearly 8 years, TMM’s existing DWDM network cannot be upgraded to support beyond-100G nor meet the requirements of future-orient metro networks. Besides, Mexico is in a seismic belt where earthquakes constantly take place, so network disconnection frequently occurs, which makes network operation and maintenance (O&M) difficult. Therefore, in view of the problems of the existing network, TMM plans to build a new metro core DWDM network to improve network reliability and reduce O&M difficulty while elevating DWDM network capacity and performance.

ZTE Helps TMM Build Metro OTN

TMM initiated a public tender focusing on new cutting-edge technologies and product performance in March 2017 and attracted major optical transport equipment providers. After three months’ technology competition, ZTE exclusively won the beyond-100G metro DWDM project of TMM. This network covers

three core cities of Mexico: Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara. In November 2017, ZTE and TMM announced commercialization of the network that is the first 5G-oriented beyond-100G metro core DWDM network supporting WASON in Mexico. In February 2018, TMM invited ZTE to participate in TMM Open House 2018, to communicate with them about the new technologies and solutions for this metro DWDM network.

In the project, ZTE provides the ZXONE 9700, an ultra-large-capacity E-OTN device for TMM. It employs ODUK/Packet/VC unified cross-connect platform and new-generation high-speed coherent communication technology and supports 100G/beyond-100G transmission rates and CD-F ROADM function. Employing WASON protection, it supports smooth upgrade to SDN in the future to improve network reliability and security. At the same time, it is loaded with OTDR, OSA and Ethernet service aggregation processing functions to substantially reduce the O&M difficulty of fiber networks and Capex of the customer. The solution covers all scenarios of the operator from the edge aggregation layer to the backbone core layer, fully meeting the

Beyond-100G commercialization briefing: ZTE and TMM Director and Sub-Directors

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39JUN 2018

requirements of TMM for transparent transmission, flexible scheduling, aggregation processing, management and monitoring of mass data services. ZTE is dedicated to building a high-quality network featuring low power consumption, high reliability, large bandwidth, low latency and ease of maintenance to meet the traffic growth requirement of TMM in the coming five to ten years, so that it can better adapt to future service development and smooth evolution

Ultra-Large-Capacity Network

With industry-leading 200G PM-16QAM technology and CD-F ROADM technology, ZTE helps TMM build the first metro core DWDM network based on 37.5 GHz spacing in Mexico. This network can provide 53×400G or 106×200G, so that the system capacity can reach 21.2 Tbps, 25% higher than that of a 50 GHz network system.

High-Reliability Network

As the political and economic center, Mexico City is loaded with wavelength automatically switched optical network (WASON) in its core network area. WASON together with the full-mesh network design makes optical network transport more intelligent. The intelligent switchover mechanism can flexibly cope with various network

emergencies, effectively reduce service interruption time caused by frequent fiber disconnection, shorten service deployment time, enhance service survivability and improve network resource utilization and network scheduling efficiency.

High-Efficiency Aggregation Network

The network is deployed with the Ethernet Layer 2 switching function, which compresses bandwidth by Layer 2 aggregation processing of client-side Ethernet cards to reduce transmission costs.

The network supports VC4/VC12 centralized cross-connect aggregation and provides a more convenient transport solution for SDH network migration and transformation and private line service transport, which makes the network flatter and the management simpler.

Fast and Simplified O&M

Optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) and optical spectrum analysis (OSA) functions provided by ZTE help TMM reduce the O&M difficulty, improve operation and maintenance efficiency and reduce OPEX. The embedded high-performance OTDR deployed by ZTE can monitor fiber parameters and fault points in all spans and notify the fault information to network maintenance personnel in real time, highly improving network maintainability and

substantially reducing fault restoration time.

With substantially

increased network capacity, TMM’s new beyond-100G metro DWDM network can reduce O&M difficulty, improve O&M efficiency and enhance network survivability by the use of cutting-edge technologies. The reliable optical transport network will boost the development of TMM’s 3G/LTE services. Beyond-100G commercialization briefing: Speech by TMM Director

NETCOLOGNE: ThE pIONEEr OF

G.FaST aCCESS IN GErMaNy

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7SEP 2016

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Success Stories

By Li Panfeng, Hu Jicheng

TE and Germany’s leading regional network operator NetCologne reached a strategic partnership in the field

of access networks, using an innovative G.fast solution to achieve Gigabit access. In the world’s first demonstration of G.fast@212 MHz being tested over a real network in Germany in May 2017, ZTE and NetCologne showcased the access rate profile of G.fast@212 MHz reaching up to 1.8 Gbps. The G.fast solution enables NetCologne’s fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) -access network to enter the Gigabit era.

NetCologne: A Leading Regional Network Operator in Germany

NetCologne, a subsidiary of utility company GEW Koln, was founded in 1994 and is based in the Cologne region of Germany. Now NetCologne has 384,000 fixed broadband subscribers and 224,000 cable TV subscribers, and has installed 23,000 km of fiber. As a

regional network operator, NetCologne provides future-proof telecom solutions including fixed-line telephony, internet data, mobile, and cable TV services for residents and business users in Greater Cologne, Bonn, and Aachen regions.

In 2014, NetCologne invested 30 million euros in network infrastructure construction and expansion. It has become Germany’s leading regional network operator by delivering FTTB services with a bandwidth of up to 100 Mbps. However, NetCologne faced tremendous competitive pressure in its main broadband business in 2015. Deutsche Telekom planned to deploy VDSL2 35b that could provide a bandwidth of 250 Mbps for end users. Cable operator Unitymedia would offer end users a bandwidth of 300 Mbps after deploying DOCSIS 3.0/3.1.

Facing the increasingly fierce market competition and growing business demands, NetCologne realized the urgency of improving network capabilities to consolidate its position in the market. To this end, NetCologne

Li Panfeng

Hu Jicheng

FN Product Planning Manager, ZTE

Wireline Solution Manager, ZTE

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proposed a development plan that would provide users with a bandwidth of more than 300 Mbps. By leveraging state-of-the-art optical-copper access technologies, NetCologne successfully reconstructed and upgraded existing DSLAM networks to enhance its overall competitiveness in the market.

NetCologne’s Pain Points and Critical Requirements

ZTE helped NetCologne with thorough investigation and assessment of its existing networks. NetCologne had about 35,000 FTTB sites, with fiber to end users’ basements via VD2 DSLAM 17a/30a. NetCologne also had 1,400 FTTC sites connected to end users through VD2 DSLAM 17a, covering less densely populated areas. After the assessment, ZTE recommended that NetCologne should use the OLT+G.fast DPU solution to replace the existing DSLAM, which can not only achieve Gigabit access but also make full use of existing subscriber line cables and DPUs to reduce Capex and shorten the construction period.

In September 2015, NetCologne decided to adopt the OLT+G.fast DPU solution for reconstructing existing VD2 DSLAM and meeting the following requirements:● Use G.fast to replace original VD2 DSLAM on 3,500

FTTB sites ● Provide a bandwidth of over 300 Mbps for users● Support PoE that meets the EU power consumption

standard SR2 ● Support flexible uplink and downlink rates to meet

user requirements● Meet the environmental requirements for installation

in the basement.

Customized G.fast Solution Facilitates Smooth Network Evolution

To meet the need for replacing XDSL devices and reusing subscriber line cables, NetCologne adopted ZTE’s customized G.fast solution based on actual scenarios. This solution has the following advantages:● Structure customization: The tailor-made size of

new devices allows NetCologne to replace its XDSL devices on the original sites and to reuse its existing cables and power supplies to reduce Capex.

● Energy saving: The design was optimized to meet the EU standard SR2 in PoE application scenarios.

● Uplink bonding: Uplink bonding is used for complete

coverage in the areas where fibers are not available.● G.fast over cable: New features are tailor made to

meet the needs of cable users. This simplifies network structure and reduces Opex.

● Network upgrade: Hardware is prepared for the G.fast@212 MHz technology, which can be implemented through software upgrade. This allows NetCologne to be well prepared for the next-generation network evolution.NetCologne speaks highly of ZTE’s tailor-made G.fast

solution that can meet its needs for rapid deployment of G.fast@106 MHz at the present stage and support smooth evolution to G.fast@212 MHz. The solution was tested and accepted by NetCologne Lab in May 2016, and the test data showed that G.fast@212 MHz set a new record of 1.8 Gbps. NetCologne officially announced that ZTE was its exclusive supplier, and started a G.fast trial over the existing network in August 2016.

“The demand for ultrafast services is constantly growing and we intend to provide NetCologne customers with the best network infrastructure in Germany. With ZTE as a partner we are on the very forefront of G.fast technology and highspeed research,” said NetCologne’s CEO Timo von Lepel.

G.fast Access Helps NetCologne Rebuild Market Leadership

Since 2006, NetCologne has deployed approximately 25,000 km of optical fibers in Cologne and its surrounding areas, rapidly completing the coverage of 260,000 households. The G.fast technology greatly accelerated the FTTH process.

In Q4 2017, NetCologne started to provide G.fast services, allowing users to enjoy high-speed internet access. NetCologne can flexibly adjust uplink and downlink bandwidths as required by customers. If customers subscribe to the new G.fast package, a technician only needs to replace related terminals through the door-to-door service. According to NetCologne’s CEO, products with a bandwidth lower than 100 Mbps will no longer be available in the future. The G.fast access technology helped NetCologne rebuild its market leadership.

NetCologne will further expand its G.fast networks and provide gigabit access services for up to 400,000 households in the next few years. NetCologne will continue to adopt ZTE’s innovative technologies to build gigabit infrastructure in Germany.