Optical service unit (OSU)-based next generation optical transport network (NG OTN) technology and verification

Abstract

With the development of transmission technologies, optical transport network (OTN) has evolved from a digital encapsulation technology to a network technology that supports multi-service transport. As the OTN gradually expands to the edge of the metropolitan area network (MAN) and enterprise users have higher quality requirements on bandwidth and service security, more and more private line services are provided via OTN network. Therefore, the OTN container is transformed from an optical data unit (ODU) to an optical service unit (OSU). The OTN industry has studied several OSU technologies to fit the development trends of NG OTN, aiming at transporting 2 Mbit/s to 100 Gbit/s constant bit rate (CBR) services and Ethernet services with high efficiency and more flexibilities, as well as reducing OTN network deployment and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs. In this work, several key technologies in NG OTN are introduced including NG OTN technical architecture, OSU frame format, client mapping and OSU multiplexing. Based on these technologies, we (China Mobile) took the lead in conducting the industry's first NG OTN test in Qingdao, which verified the service transport capability and lower latency performance of OSUs and promoted the maturity of the NG OTN industry chain.