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FLEX-SCALE

Flexible Scalable Energy Efficient Networking

FLEX-SCALE advances disruptive research on complementary optical x-haul network, by utilising ultra-high bandwidth photonic/plasmonic technologies. FLEX-SCALE consortium spans the value chain of industry/academia experts to extend Europe’s leadership in 6G x-haul with offerings of the highest-capacity flexible optoelectronic interfaces and fast switching nodes that fully exploit the optical spatial/spectral resources with the use of novel algorithms and control-plane implementations.

Funded by the EU’s HORIZON-JTI-SNS-2022 program (No. 101096909)

FLEX-SCALE project page

Duration: January 2023 - December 2025

 

FLEX-SCALE advances disruptive research on complementary optical x-haul (x = front/mid/back) network technologies for Optical Switching Nodes and their Transceiver Interfaces. Enabling flexible capacity scaling of 10 Tb/s rate per interface, 1 Pb/s capacity per link, and 10 Pb/s throughput per optical node. And that by utilising ultra-high bandwidth photonic/plasmonic technologies and efficiently exploiting optical spatial and spectral switching (UltraWide - Band Spectral & Spatial Lanes Multiplexing; UWB/SDM). The developed x-haul 6G optical network innovations will achieve record energy efficiency (sub-pJ per switched/transmitted bit) and low cost, enabled by photonic integration and optical transparency, replacing/bypassing power-hungry and costly electronic processing systems. The main Objectives for FLEX-SCALE are:

  • Establish front-haul and back-haul 6G network requirements and system specifications to satisfy the 6G application needs, and identification of components’ capabilities, supported by modelling and simulation studies to optimise the management of traffic flows across the network.
  • Design, implementation and evaluation of a Multi-Granular (MG) optical network node, which is implemented by WBSS modules at ingress/egress fibre ports and augmented by OXC and WSS functions. This novel node can support all the way from full fibre routing, full band routing all the way to legacy wavelength routing.
  • Development of WaveBand Selective Switch (WBSS) concept on SiN PIC platform
  • Development of 10 Tb/s-capable all-optical energy-efficient optical interconnects
  • Development of an energy-efficient plasmonic optoelectronic platform
  • Develop algorithms and implement sustainable transport network control to optimise traffic flows across network layers
  • Integration of SDN controlled 10Tbps Transceivers & Pb/s UWB/SDM Nodes
  • Demonstration of the SDM/UWB fast switching using the abilities of the WBSS and demonstration of oDAC solution through lab trials
  • Techno-economic studies of the FLEX-SCALE network, subsystems and device developments.