Introduction to the Optical Networks Design and Modeling 2024 Special Issue

In this special issue, we include eight papers that were extended from the conference papers presented at the 28th International Conference on Optical Networks Design and Modeling 2024 (ONDM 2024), whose motto was “Optical networks at scale: coping with the scalability challenge of future smart networks.” The objective of the conference and this special issue is the selection of the latest research on optical network architectures, control, modeling, and planning techniques driving the design of next-generation networks to meet the challenges of ubiquitous universal green AI. The overall research goal of the works is improving the capacity, efficiency, flexibility, availability, autonomy, resiliency, security, and intelligence of optical access and transport networks in a scalable way. The selected works described below meet the challenge, first looking into the design of digital twins for optical transport networks, investigating advanced mechanisms for failure detection and post-disaster data center content evacuation. Second, through the introduction of quantum technologies. Indeed, the amount of selected works including quantum reveals the growing interest on this topic: on the one hand, the application of quantum-computing-based algorithms to solve classic optical networking problems as an alternative to ILP, and, on the other, the focus on new quantum key distribution technologies capable of coexisting with classical channels either using optical fiber or free space optics.