Report available! Network remote powering through quasi-passive reconfigurable nodes

This project investigated the remote powering of the Internet using quasi-passive network nodes, where the power required for the providing Internet in remote network nodes without local power supply is remotely provided optically. The pump light for remote powering of network nodes is transmitted using the same data transmission fibre to reuse the existing network infrastructure. The major objectives of the project are to investigate, develop and optimize the network node and the remote power scheme, to increase the scalability, traffic handling capability and efficiency, via both theoretical study and numerical simulations.

The project was originally planned to be completed in 12 months. However, due to the interruption of COVID-19, the university campus was locked down for a prolonged period and no access to the university was allowed, This interruption resulted in delays in the project, and the project was completed at the end of May, 2021 (the research paper was published in mid December, 2021).

Although the project has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 situation, the project team managed to adjust the plan slightly to focus more on the theoretical study, modelling and analysis during this period. The main activities conducted in this project include:

The model of individual components in the node has been completed;
The signal propagation model in the network node has been built;
The theoretical model of the remote powering scheme has been established;
The remote powering scheme based network node has been analyzed theoretically and through comprehensive numerical simulations;
The complexity of the remote powering scheme based network node has been analyzed;
The impact of the opticam pump on the signal transmission in fibre has been studied;
The impact of different data modulation formats in remotely powered network node has been investigated;
The multiple optical pumps scheme has been proposed and studied to further increase the availability of power to nodes without local power supply, and two different configurations of the multiple optical pumps scheme have been analyzed and compared;
Large-scale optical networks with the proposed quasi-passive network nodes and remote powering technique have been simulated, and the statistical performance has been investigated.

The final report is available here.

Congratulations to the ISIF Asia Grantees for 2019

This year ISIF Asia selected 6 organizations in the Asia Pacific to receive USD 20,000 to support research and development of Internet technologies for the benefit of the region. The ideas they submitted for the 2019 call for proposals highlight the main technical, operational and development issues that concern the Asia Pacific Internet community and concrete solutions to address them. This year’s funding round marks our 11th anniversary of operation in the Asia Pacific, and a total of USD 120,000 was allocated.

The application process this year, as the topics for our grants get more specialized, attracted highly relevant proposals and highlighted how a variety of stakeholders are working towards the development of the Internet. We see those as great indicators about the relevance of ISIF Asia as a mechanism to support the development of the Internet across the region. We received 70 proposals from 17 economies.

The funding will be distributed among organizations representing Private Sector (1) and Academia (5) across 5 economies: Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and New Zealand.

We are confident the outcomes of their work will continue to support an open, stable, and secure Internet that serves the needs of the people in our region.

2019 Network Operations Research Grants

  • Modelling and identifying IP address space fragmentation pressure points. Curtin University. Australia. USD 20,000
  • Honeynet Threat Sharing Platform. Swiss German University (SGU), Badan Siber & Sandi Negara (BSSN) and Indonesia Honeynet Project (IHP). Indonesia. USD 20,000
  • Implementation and Utilites of RDAP for wider usability among Internet Stakeholders. University of Malaya. Malaysia. USD 20,000
  • Network coding over satellite links: scheduling redundancy for better goodput. The University of Auckland. New Zealand. USD 20,000

2019 I4D Powering Internet Infrastructure Grants

  • Telemetering the telltale signs of power issues of wireless internet relays. Rural Broadband – AirJaldi. India. USD 20,000
  • Network Remote Powering through Quasi-Passive Optical Nodes. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University). Australia. USD 20,000

The 2019 I4D Award was not granted this year, instead one additional grant under the Network Operations Research was allocated.

The APNIC Foundation and ISIF Asia thanks all the applicants for sharing their ideas with us, the Selection Committees members for their hard work to arrive to this great outcome, and to APNIC for their generous funding contributions for 2019.