SONET LAYERS

SONET LAYERS

The SONET standard includes four functional layers: the photonic, the section, the line, and the path layer. They correspond to both the physical and the data link layers . The headers added to the frame at the various layers are discussed later in this chapter.

Path Layer

The path layer is responsible for the movement of a signal from its optical source to its optical destination. At the optical source, the signal is changed from an electronic form into an optical form, multiplexed with other signals, and encapsulated in a frame. At the optical destination, the received frame is demultiplexed, and the individual optical signals are changed back into their electronic forms. Path layer overhead is added at this layer. STS multiplexers provide path layer functions.


Line Layer

The line layer is responsible for the movement of a signal across a physical line. Line layer overhead is added to the frame at this layer. STS multiplexers and add/drop multiplexers provide line layer functions.

Section Layer

The section layer is responsible for the movement of a signal across a physical section. It handles framing, scrambling, and error control. Section layer overhead is added to the frame at this layer.

Photonic Layer

The photonic layer corresponds to the physical layer of the OSI model. It includes physical specifications for the optical fiber channel, the sensitivity of the receiver, multiplexing functions, and so on. SONET uses NRZ encoding with the presence of light representing 1 and the absence of light representing 0.

Device-Layer Relationships

an STS multiplexer is a four-layer device. An add/drop multiplexer is a three-layer device. A regenerator is a two-layer device.

SONET FRAMES

Each synchronous transfer signal STS-n is composed of 8000 frames. Each frame is a two-dimensional matrix of bytes with 9 rows by 90 x n columns. For example, STS- 1 frame is 9 rows by 90 columns (810 bytes), and an STS-3 is 9 rows by 270 columns (2430 bytes).

Frame, Byte, and Bit Transmission

One of the interesting points about SONET is that each STS-n signal is transmitted at a fixed rate of 8000 frames per second. This is the rate at which voice is digitized . For each frame the bytes are transmitted from the left to the right, top to the bottom. For each byte, the bits are transmitted from the most significant to the least significant (left to right).


If we sample a voice signal and use 8 bits (1 byte) for each sample, we can say that each byte in a SONET frame can carry information from a digitized voice channel. In other words, an STS-1 signal can carry 774 voice channels simultaneously (810 minus required bytes for overhead).

STS-1 Frame Format

SONET frame is a matrix of 9 rows of 90 bytes (octets) each, for a total of 810 bytes. The first three columns of the frame are used for section and line overhead. The upper three rows of the first three columns are used for section overhead (SOH). The lower six are line overhead (LOH). The rest of the frame is called the synchronous payload envelope (SPE). It contains user data and path overhead (POH) needed at the user data level. We will discuss the format of the SPE shortly.

Section Overhead

Alignment bytes (A1 and A2). Bytes A1 and A2 are used for framing and synchronization and are called alignment bytes. These bytes alert a receiver that a frame is arriving and give the receiver a predetermined bit pattern on which to syn- chronize. The bit patterns for these two bytes in hexadecimal are 0xF628. The bytes serve as a flag.

Section parity byte (B1). Byte B1 is for bit interleaved parity (BIP-8). Its value is calculated over all bytes of the previous frame. In other words, the ith bit of this byte is the parity bit calculated over all ith bits of the previous STS-n frame. The value of this byte is filled only for the first STS-1 in an STS-n frame. In other words, although an STS-n frame has n B 1 bytes, as we will see later, only the first byte has this value; the rest are filled with Os.

Identification byte (C1). Byte C1 carries the identity of the STS-1 frame. This byte is necessary when multiple STS-ls are multiplexed to create a higher-rate STS (STS-3, STS-9, STS-12, etc.). Information in this byte allows the various signals to be recog- nized easily upon demultiplexing. For example, in an STS-3 signal, the value of the C 1 byte is 1 for the first STS- 1; it is 2 for the second; and it is 3 for the third.

Management bytes (D1, D2, and D3). Bytes D1, D2, and D3 together form a 192-kbps channel (3 x 8000 x 8) called the data communication channel. This chan- nel is required for operation, administration, and maintenance (OA&M) signaling.

Order wire byte (El). Byte E1 is the order wire byte. Order wire bytes in consecutive frames form a channel of 64 kbps (8000 frames per second times 8 bits per

frame). This channel is used for communication between regenerators, or between terminals and regenerators.

User's byte (F1). The F1 bytes in consecutive frames form a 64-kbps channel that is reserved for user needs at the section level.