Recently, China Telecom Sichuan Branch (hereinafter referred to as “Sichuan Telecom”) announced that it will work with Huawei to create a provincial dry light cube network. The project uses Huawei’s latest all-optical switching OXC product to reconstruct the provincial dry light transmission network and tap the existing network resources. Potential, expand network capabilities, and enhance operational efficiency to meet the medium- and long-term challenges of digital transformation and new business development in the era of cloud connectivity.

In order to continue to provide customers with quality network services and maintain the advanced nature of the network, Sichuan Telecom has always adhered to the continuous investment in network construction and the steady improvement of network capabilities. In the process of network construction, it also faces a series of problems: network traffic is uneven, taking Chengdu as an example. The utilization rate of transmission nodes in hotspots is over 75%, but the utilization rate of other nodes is less than 30%; the resources of the equipment room are insufficient, and the core equipment room is saved. The space and power supply capacity are insufficient, the new optical transmission plane resources are consumed, and the overall construction period is long. The traditional ROADM solution room space consumption is large, and the board is complicated by fiber, which increases the complexity of maintenance.

In order to match the rapid network construction, and at the same time improve the network robustness and reduce the TCO and other requirements, the project uses Huawei’s all-optical transmission solution to enable the full interconnection of services, the direct network construction concept, and the network delay is greatly reduced. The project will introduce 10 core nodes such as Chengdu Xinhua, Chengdu Bessen and Mianyang Network Management Building into 100Gb/s system to introduce OXC (all-optical switching) new technology, and newly add optical cables between devices to form a mesh network structure; The circuit carried on the original system is cut to the newly built OXC system, and finally an optical cube network with 12 OXC nodes as the core is formed, and the service optical layer is directly hopped.

Based on the high-reliability and low-interruption optical backplane technology, Huawei OXC products integrate multiple independent boards in the traditional ROADM solution, greatly simplifying site deployment, saving 80% of the site space and optical layer debugging time.  Reduce by 80%. The scheduling capability uses the leading LCoS (silicon-based liquid crystal) switching technology to achieve P-bit cross-capacity and up to 32-dimensional optical cross-scheduling capability, meeting the all-optical interconnection and large-capacity scheduling requirements of Sichuan Telecom network traffic highland. At the same time, OXC also solves the complicated problem of traditional ROADM site fiber-linking, simplifies the optical layer connection, realizes the optical layer “0” fiber connection in the station, and the built-in digital optical parameter detection can sense the fiber quality, wavelength performance, wavelength utilization rate and wavelength path in real time. The digital operation and maintenance of the optical layer is realized, and the operation and maintenance efficiency of the network is greatly improved.

In June 2019, Sichuan Province and Sichuan Telecom jointly released the Ya’an West Sichuan Big Data Center to build the western big data industry highland. As an important network infrastructure, the provincial dry-light cube network has the characteristics of large bandwidth, low latency, flexible expansion, and easy operation and maintenance to meet the rapid service opening of DC services and flexible on-demand requirements. In the first phase of the Western Sichuan Big Data Center, the demand for 1.6T business bursts was raised. The optical cube network has flexible expansion capabilities, providing transmission capacity within two weeks and responding quickly to business needs.

Yang Jin, senior engineer of Sichuan Telecom Network Development Department, said: “Sichuan Telecom’s backbone transmission network is undergoing digital transformation and reconstruction. Huawei’s all-optical switching OXC products provide us with a large bandwidth, low latency, highly efficient and simplified network. It matches the rapid development of Sichuan Telecom network and simplifies the network, shortens the time of business online, and provides customers with the best network experience.”

Lu Yiquan, president of Huawei’s transport network, said: “I am very pleased to work with Sichuan Telecom to build this modern optical transport network. This network can meet the new business development needs of Sichuan Telecom Cloud Internet era, and at the same time improve network operation and maintenance efficiency for end users. Providing the ultimate experience, Huawei will continue to innovate and research to provide customers with sustainable and evolving solutions to help business success.”