Machine learning enhanced next-generation optical access networks—challenges and emerging solutions [Invited Tutorial]

Abstract

Optical access networks are envisioned to become increasingly complex as they support more and more diverse and immersive services, each with a different capacity, latency, and reliability need. While machine learning has been touted as a silver bullet that will intelligently manage network operations and resources to meet these demands, as it had been anticipated for core and metro networks, there exist various challenges that need to be addressed to progress machine learning models from research to production. In this tutorial, we first aim to motivate the continued push to advance optical access networks and rationalize the use of machine learning in these networks. We then highlight the challenges that are especially amplified due to the traffic dynamicity and heterogeneity, data scarcity, and computation-resource constraints of optical access networks. We discuss emerging machine learning approaches that are being explored to address these challenges. Finally, we consider a fast and self-adaptive machine learning enhanced dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme in an illustrative future use case of supporting immersive human-to-machine communications over the mobile fronthaul of next-generation mobile networks.