Advances in optical networks control and management

Control and management play a key role in enabling optical networks to efficiently and smoothly carry user data. Significant advances in optical network control and management can be observed in the past few years, ranged from the distributed Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) solutions to a more centralized Path Computation Element-based (PCE-based) technology. More recently, multi-domain and multi-layer optical transport networks have become a new research focus for optical networks control and management. In addition, along with research on optical systems enabling elastic, spectrum-efficient and gridless optical networks, as well as reduced energy consumption, network control and management architectures and protocols that can efficiently allocate optical fiber spectrum resources and support energy-efficient operation are gaining increasing research interest. The future optical network management and control plane is expected to be more versatile, scalable, automatic, and resource-efficient. This special issue aims at providing an opportunity for researchers and engineers to share their latest research results and experiences on recent advances in optical network control and management. After a thorough review process, nine papers are selected for publication in this ‘‘Optical Switching and Networking’’ journal special issue on ‘‘Advances in Optical Networks Control and Management’’. The first group of three papers present designs of optical network control plane. In the first paper ‘‘Distributed Optical Control Plane for Dynamic Lightpath Establishment in Translucent Optical Networks Based on Reachability Graph’’ by E. Salvadori, V.S. Chava, A. Zanardi, D. Siracusa, G. Galimberti, A. Tanzi, G. Martinelli, and O. Gerstel, the authors propose mechanisms and corresponding GMPLS protocol extensions for impairment and regenerator aware routing and wavelength assignment in translucent optical networks. In the second paper ‘‘Design of a GMPLS Control Plane with PCE-Based Impairment-Aware Full Restoration Capability for Translucent WSON: Enabling Techniques, Service Demonstration, and Performance Evaluation’’,