Cognitive, Heterogeneous and Reconfigurable Optical Networks: The CHRON Project

High degree of heterogeneity of future optical networks, stemming from provisioning of services with different quality-of-transmission requirements, and transmission links employing mixed modulation formats or switching techniques, will pose a challenge for the control and management of the network. The incorporation of cognitive techniques can help to optimize a network by employing mechanisms that can observe, act, learn and improve network performance, taking into account end-to-end goals. The EU project CHRON: Cognitive Heterogeneous Reconfigurable Optical Network proposes a strategy to efficiently control the network by implementing cognition. In this paper we present a survey of different techniques developed throughout the course of the project to apply cognition in future optical networks.