At GITEX Global 2024, Huawei unveiled a ground-breaking innovation set to redefine the optical transport landscape — the industry's first end-to-end fine-grained Optical Transport Network (fgOTN) product portfolio.
Designed to build ultra-broadband, reliable, and continuously evolving communication networks, fgOTN aims to meet the burgeoning demands of electric power transportation and beyond.
In an exclusive interview with Developing Telecoms, Chen Zeyu, Director of Enterprise Optical Product Marketing & Solution, Huawei, shed light on how fgOTN differentiates itself from traditional OTN solutions and its potential impact on global telecommunications and industrial networks.
Bridging the Gap Between SDH and OTN
For nearly three decades, Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) technology has been the backbone of telecom and industrial networks, prized for its reliability, stability, and low latency. However, SDH’s maximum bandwidth caps at 10 Gbps, a limitation in today’s data-intensive environment.
“The fgOTN is the next generation of OTN, and it’s more related to SDH,” Chen explained. “SDH is almost 30 years old, and while it’s been widely used in telecom networks and industrial systems like power grids and railway controls, its lifecycle is nearing an end. We need technology to substitute this aging system.”
Optical Transport Network (OTN) technology emerged to address fibre resource limitations, allowing multiple wavelengths in a single fibre and supporting longer distances with higher bandwidths than SDH. However, OTN isn’t always the ideal solution for industries like power grids, which often require only a few kilobits or megabits of bandwidth.
“OTN has its advantages — long distance, higher bandwidth, many wavelengths — but it’s too big for some applications,” Chen noted. “For example, using OTN for small services is a waste of wavelengths. That's why we're promoting fgOTN for the power grid. The minimum service level can reach 10 Mbps, essentially combining the best of SDH and OTN.”
Introducing fgOTN: A Fine-Grained Solution
Huawei's fgOTN technology is designed to offer a more granular approach to optical transport, catering to industries that require high reliability and low latency without the excessive bandwidth that traditional OTN provides.
“In December last year, International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) launched the standard for fgOTN,” Chen said. “This year, we’ve developed products and are starting commercial deployment in China. We believe that by the end of this year, the whole solution will be mature enough to meet overseas requirements.”
One of the standout features of Huawei fgOTN solution is its support for multiple services, including PCM, PKT, SDH, and OTN, all accessible and carried in a unified manner. This versatility is built upon Huawei's MS-OTN platform, known for its high integration and comprehensive service cross-connections.
Overcoming Industry Challenges
Introducing a new technology like fgOTN comes with its set of challenges, primarily in standardisation and industry acceptance.
Chen emphasised. “SDH technology is quite old, and many vendors have stopped investing in this area. To build up the ecosystem, Huawei is actively cooperating with industry customers and other vendors to improve product solutions and commercial use..”
“In the past, there was much discussion about what’s next after SDH — like MPLS-TP or IP/MPLS or OTN— but for the power grid or railway, the most suitable technology is still SDH or fgOTN,” Chen explained. “They have very high reliability and low latency requirements. Transportation and power grid industries prioritise security and high reliability above all."
The Advantages of Hard Pipe Technology
Both SDH and fgOTN are based on Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), often referred to as “hard pipe” technology. This approach provides dedicated bandwidth for services, ensuring consistent performance regardless of network congestion.
“Hard pipe technologies can provide dedicated pipes or bandwidth for the service,” Chen said. “In cases of heavy traffic, long latency won’t happen. We can guarantee high reliability and security. This kind of technology can guarantee the security and reliability much better than any other kind.”
By maintaining these dedicated channels, fgOTN ensures that critical services, especially in industries where delays or data loss could have significant consequences, operate without interruption.
Monitoring and Latency Map: A New Standard
Huawei's fgOTN portfolio introduces features like real-time latency map and advanced fibre monitoring capabilities.
“We have features to monitor the fibre state,” Chen highlighted. “If the fibre breaks, we can locate where the break happened. We can also monitor the performance of the wavelengths running in the fibre. For latency, we can show a real-time latency map of the real network. This is a big difference between Huawei and other vendors.”
Such transparency is crucial for industries that require precise timing and reliability. For instance, financial institutions can benefit from knowing the exact latency of their networks, impacting high-frequency trading and data synchronisation.
“For some customers, they want to know the real latency in the network,” Chen added. “It's really important for us to launch these features for the customer.”
A Vision for the Future
“We are investing heavily in this technology as it is the main technology to succeed SDH,” Chen asserted. “Whether in the telecom industry or in power and railway industries, it is the standard.”
“We use the same MS-OTN platform to support SDH, fgOTN, and even MPLS-TP,” Chen explained. “This means with one piece of equipment, our customers can match all their requirements. If they want to migrate to fgOTN, they can do it step by step. We support SDH and fgOTN dual mode, so customers can connect to existing equipment with SDH first and migrate to fgOTN later, without impacting the live network service.”
The Road Ahead
As Huawei prepares to roll out fgOTN commercially in China and eventually in international markets.-With the telecommunications landscape rapidly evolving, technologies like fgOTN offer a promising solution to bridge the gap between legacy systems and future demands. By combining the reliability and low latency of SDH with the scalability and efficiency of OTN, fgOTN positions itself as a viable and attractive option for industries where performance and security are non-negotiable.
Huawei's fgOTN Portfolio
1. Backbone-to-Access Support: The first to support fgOTN across backbone and access products, offering the highest integration in the industry.
2. Dual-Mode Tributary Service Board: Supports smooth SDH/fgOTN switchover, facilitating mixed networking and node-by-node upgrades.
3. Real-Time Latency Map: An industry-first feature providing millisecond-level service SLAs, with multi-path lossless protection achieving 99.9999% reliability.
4. Advanced Monitoring: Features like "fibre doctor" and "optical doctor" allow for real-time monitoring of fibre state and performance.
As industries continue to demand more from their networks—be it higher bandwidth, lower latency, or increased reliability—innovations like fgOTN will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of global communications.
