Curriculum SS 0501 Issue 2.

SDH Principle

Section 1 SDH Overview

Objectives:
To understand the background of SDH Why did SDH transmission system emerge? To understand the advantages and disadvantages of SDH system . To understand the general concept of SDH for future further study.

1.1 Technical Background of SDH ---- Why did SDH transmission system emerge?
Before learning SDH transmission system, we must understand the concept of SDH. What is SDH? SDH is the abbreviation of Synchronous Digital Hierarchy. Like PDH ---- plesiochronous digital hierarchy, SDH is a transmission system (protocol) which defines the characteristic of digital signals, including frame structure, multiplexing method, digital rates hierarchy, and interface code pattern, and so on. What is the technical background for the emergence of SDH? As we know, this is a society of informaton. A highly developed information society demands a telecommunication network which can provide a variety of telecommunication services. The information transmitted, switched and processed via the telecommunication network will steadily increase. This requires modern telecommunication networks to be digital, integrate, intelligent and personal. As an important part of the telecommunication network, the transmission system directly affects the development of the network. Countries all over the world are now making great efforts in building information highways. One of the key projects of the information highway is to establish high-capacity optical fiber transmission networks and to broaden the bandwidth so as to increase signal rates in the transmission lines. This like expanding highways for large traffic flows. Meanwhile, subscribers expect a universal interface standard for telecommunication networks so that each subscriber in our "global village" can easily communicate at any time and any place. As the multiplexing method of the transmission network established on the traditional PDH system can not satisfy the requirements of high-capacity transimission and regional standards of the PDH system make it difficult for
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networks interconnection, PDH system is becoming a more and more serious "bottleneck" of modern telecommunication network which restrains the rapid development of the network towards large capacity and standardization. The disadvantages of traditional PDH transmission system are as follows:1. Interface 1) There are only some regional provisions, instead of universal standards for electrical interface. The present PDH digital signal hierarchy has three rate levels: European Series, North American Series and Japanese Series. Each of them has different electrical interface rate levels, frame structures and multiplexing methods. This makes it difficult for international interconnection and is far behind the development trend of convenient communication at any time and place. The rate levels of electrical interface of these three signals are shown in Figure 1-1.
European Series 565Mb/s 4 139Mb/s 4 34Mb/s 4 8Mb/s 4 2Mb/s Japanese Series 1.6Gb/s 4 400Mb/s 4 100Mb/s 3 32Mb/s 5 6.3Mb/s 4 1.5Mb/s 45Mb/s 7 6.3Mb/s 4 274Mb/s 6 North American Series

Figure 1-1 The rate hierarchy diagram of electrical interfaces

2) No universal standards for optical interfaces. All PDH equipment manufacturers use their own line codes to monitor the transmission performance in the optical links. A typical example is mBnB code, of which mB is the information code and nB is the redundancy code. The function of the redundancy code is to realize the monitoring function of the equipment over the transmission performances of the links. Due to the insertion of redundancy codes, the signal rate of optical interface is higher than the standard signal rate of electrical interface of the same rate level. This not only increases the power penalty of the transmitter, but also results in incompatibility of equipment provided by different vendors. Because manufactures add different redundancy codes next to the information codes during

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line coding in order to achieve line monitoring functions, the optical interface code patterns and rates of the same rate levels employed by different manufactures are different. So equipment at the two ends of a transmission link must be provided by the same vendor. This cause many difficulties for network structuring, management and network interconnection. 2. Multiplexing method In the present PDH system, only 1.5Mb/s and 2Mb/s rate signals (including Japanese Series 6.3Mb/s rate signal) are synchronous. All other signals are asynchronous and require code rate justification for matching and accepting clock difference. As PDH adopts asynchronous multiplexing method, the locations of the low-rate signals are not regular nor fixed when they are multiplexed into higher-rate signals. That is to say, the locations of the lower signals are unable to be identified from the higher speed signals. But this is the key to directly add/drop lower speed signals from the higher speed signals. This is the same when looking for a stranger in a crowd. You can easily find him if you know which line and which row he stays in when the crowd is arranged in an specific order. But if the crowd is in a mess, you have to compare each person with the photo to locate the man. Since PDH adopts asynchronous multiplexing method, low-rate signals can not be directly added/dropped from PDH high-rate signals. For example, 2Mb/s signals can not be directly added/droped from 140Mb/s signals. Here arises two problems: 1) Adding/dropping low-rate signals from high-rate signals must be conducted level by level. For example, to add/drop 2Mb/s low-rate signals from 140Mb/s signals, the following procedures must be conducted. (Figure 1-2):
140Mb/s 34Mb/s 8Mb/s
de-multiplexer de-multiplexer de-multiplexer multiplexer

140Mb/s 34Mb/s 8Mb/s

multiplexer multipilexer

2Mb/s

Figure 1-2 Add/drop 2Mb/s signals from 140Mb/s signals

As shown in the figure, lots of "back-to-back" equipment are used during the process of adding/dropping 2Mb/s signals from 140Mb/s signals. Three stages of demultiplexing equipment are used to drop 2Mb/s low-rate signals from 140Mb/s signals and then three stages of multiplexing equipment are used to add 2Mb/s lowrate signals into 140Mb/s signals. One 140Mb/s signal can be multiplexed into 64 2Mb/s low-rate signals. Multiplexing and de-multiplexing equipment in all three stages are required to add/drop even one 2Mb/s signal from 140Mb/s signals. This
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not only enlarges the size and increases cost, power consumption and complexity of equipment, but also decreases the reliability of the equipment. 2) Since adding/dropping low-rate signals to high-rate ones must go through many stages of multiplexing and de-multiplexing , impairment to the signals during multiplexing/de-multiplexing processes will increase and transmission performance will deteriorate. This is unbearable in large capacity transmission. That's the reason why the transmission rate of PDH system has not being improved further. 3. Operation maintenance In the frame structure of PDH signals, there are few overhead bytes used for operation, administration and maintenance (OAM). This is the reason why redundancy codes must be added during optical line coding for the equipment so as to fulfill the monitoring function over line performance. The fact that few overhead bytes are used for the OAM of PDH signals is also a disadvantage for layered management, performance monitoring, real-time service dispatching, bandwidth control, and alarm analyzing and locating of the transmission network. 4. No universal network management interface When buying a set of equipment from a vendor, you have to buy its network management system. So different parts of the network may use different network management systems, which are obstacles in forming an integrated. telecommunication management system (TMN). Because of the above-mentioned disadvantages, the PDH transmission system increasingly impedes the development of transmission network. Therefore, Bell Telecommunication Research Institute in the U.S. first proposed the synchronous optical network (SONET) hierarchy cosisting of a complete set of standard digital transfer structures divided into different levels. The concept of SONET was accepted by CCITT in 1988, and renamed as synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH). SDH is a general technique system both for optical fiber transmission and for microwave and satellite transmission. This course focuses on the applications of the SDH system on optical fiber transmission networks.

Questions:

Maybe you've already learned from some materials that for SDH signals low-rate signals can be directly dropped from high-rate signals, e. g., 2Mb/s signals can be directly dropped from 2.5G signals. Why? This characteristic is related to the special synchronous multiplexing method of SDH. Since SDH adopts synchronous multiplexing method, the location of the low-rate signals in the high-rate signal

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SDH Principle

frame can be predicted. So it is easy to directly drop low-rate signals from high-rate ones.

1.2 Advantages of SDH over PDH

Since SDH transmission system evolves from PDH, it has unparalleled advantages over PDH. Compared with PDH, it is a new transmission system that has made radical revolution in technical system. First, we wil discuss the basic concept of SDH. The core of this concept is, in view of an integrated national telecommunication network and international intercommunication, to establish digital telecommunication networks, and to make up important parts of integrated services digital networks (ISDN), especially broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN). How to undstand this concept? Different from traditional PDH, the network based on SDH system is a highly uniform, standardized and intelligent network. It uses universal interfaces to achieve compatibility with different equipment from different vendors. It also boasts of highly efficient and coordinated management and operation through out the whole network and transmission process, flexible networking and traffic dispatching, and network self-healing function. It greatly enhances the utilization ratio of network resources and reduces the OAM costs due to the enhanced maintenance function. Now we will give detail advantages of SDH (they can be regarded as the features of SDH) in several aspects. Please make comparison with PDH system when reading. 1. Interface 1) Electrical interface Standardization of interfaces determines the possibility of interconnection among different equipment from different vedors. SDH system provides universal standards for network node interfaces (NNI), including sdandards on digital signal rate level, frame structure, multiplexing method, line interface, monitoring and management, etc.. So SDH equipment of diffenrent vendors can be easily interconnected, i.e. equipment from different vendors can be installed on the same line, which fully demonstrates the system compatibility. SDH system provides a set of standard information structure levels, i.e. a set of standard rate levels. The basic signal transmission structure level is a synchronous transfer module ---- STM-1 at a rate of 155Mb/s. Digital signal hierarchies of higher levels such as 622Mb/s (STM-4) and 2.5Gb/s (STM-16) can be formed by low-rate information modules (e.g. STM-1) via byte interleaved multiplexing. The

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number of modules to be multiplexed is a multiple of 4. For example, STM4=4xSTM-1 and STM-16=4xSTM-4.

Technical details:
What is byte interleaved multiplexing method? We can explain it by the following example. There are three signals with the frame structure of 3 bytes in each frame.
A A A A 1 2 3 B B B B 1 2 3 C C C C 1 2 3

If signal D is formed by byte interleaved multiplexing method, it will have a frame structure of 9 bytes in each frame and these 9 bytes are arranged in the order as shown in the following figure:
D A B C A B C A B C 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3

This multiplexing method is called byte interleaved multiplexing method.

2) Optical interface Line interfaces (here refers to optical interface) adopt universal standards. Line coding of SDH signals are only scrambling, insteand of inserting redundancy codes. The standard for scrambling is universal. Therefore the opposite-terminal equipment can be interconnected with SDH equipment of different vendors via standard descrambler alone. The purpose of scrambling is to make the probability of "1" bits and "0" bits occurence gets close to 50% so as to extract clock signals from line signals. As line signals are scrambled only, the line signal rates of SDH are the same with the standard signal rates of the SDH electrical interface. This will not add extra optical power penalty to the transmitting laser. 2. Multiplexing method As low-rate SDH signals are multiplexed into the frame structure of high-rate SDH signals via byte interleaved multiplexing method, their locations in the frame of high-rate SDH signal are fixed and regular, or say, predictable. Therefore, low-rate SDH signals, e.g. 155Mb/s, (STM-1 ), can be directly added to or dropped from high-rate signals, e.g., 2.5Gb/s (STM-16 ). This simplifies the multiplexing and demultiplexing processes of signals and makes SDH hierarchy especially suitable for high rate and large capacity optical fiber transmission systems. As synchronous multiplexing method and flexible mapping structure are employed, PDH low-rate tributary signals (e.g., 2Mb/s ) can also be multiplexed into SDH signal frame (STM-N). Their locations in STM-N frame are also predictable. So
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low-rate tributary signals can be directly added to or dropped from STM-N signals. Note that this is different from the above process of directly adding/dropping lowrate SDH signals to/from high-rate SDH signals. Here it refers to direct adding/dropping of low-rate tributary signals, such as 2Mb/s, 34Mb/s, and 140Mb/s, to/from SDH signals. This saves lots of multiplexing/de-multiplexing equipment (back-to-back equipment), enhances reliability, and reduces signal impairment, and the cost, power consumption and complexity of the equipment. Adding/dropping of services is futher symplified. This multiplexing method of SDH helps to fulfill the funciton of digital crossconnection (DXC), and provides the network with powerful self-healing function. Subscribers can dynamically implement networking according to needs and perform real-time traffic dispatching.

Technical details:
What is the network self-healing function? Network self-healing refers to the automatic protection switching of the network. When service is interrupted due to traffic channel damage, the network will automatically switch to standby traffic channel so that the service can be restored to normal transmission state in a short time (less than 50ms as defined by ITU-T ). Please note that self-healing merely restores the services. The fault equipment and channel must be repaired manually. To achieve network self-healing function, the SDH equipment shall possess not only the DXC function ( for switching the service from the active channel to the standby channel), but also redundancy channels (standby channels) and redundancy equipment (standby equipment). The following is a simple example of a transmission network with self-healing function.

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3. Operation, administration and maintenance Abundant overhead bits for operation, administration and maintenance (OAM) function are arranged in the frame structures of SDH signals. This greatly enforces the network monitoring function, i.e. automatic maintenance. Some redundancy bits must be added during line coding for line performance monitoring because few overhead bytes are arranged in PDH signals. For example, in the frame structure of PCM30/32 signals, only the bits in TS0 and TS16 time slots are used for OAM function. The abundant overheads in SDH signals account for 1/20 of the total bytes in a frame. It greatly enhances the OAM function and reduces the cost of system maintenance which occupies most of the overall cost of telecommunication equipments. The overall cost of SDH system is less than that of PDH system and estimated to be only 65.8% of that of the later. 4. Compatibility SDH has high compatibility, which means that the SDH transmission network and the existing PDH transmission network can work together while establishing SDH transimission network. SDH network can be used for transmitting PDH services, as well as signals of other hierarchies, such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) signals and FDDI signals. How does the SDH transmission network achieve such compatibility? The basic transfer module (STM-1) of SDH signals in SDH network can accommodate three PDH digital signal hierarchies and other hierarchies such as ATM, FDDI and DQDB. This reflects the forward and backward compatibility of SDH and guarantees smooth transitions from PDH to SDH network and from SDH to ATM. How does SDH accommodate signals of these hierarchies? It simply multiplexes the low-rate signals of different hierarchies into the frame structure of the STM-1 signals at the boundary of the network (e.g. SDH/PDH start point) and then demultiplexes them at the boundary of the network (end point). In this way, digital signals of different hierarchies can be transmitted in the SDH transmission network.

Tips:
In SDH network, the SDH signal functions as a transport truck. It packs the signals of different hierarchies (refering to PDH signals in this course) into packages of different sizes (rate levels) like packing cargoes, and then loads them onto the truck (STM-N frame) for transmission on SDH main trunk (fiber). At the receiving end, it unloads the packed cargoes (signals of other hierarchies) from the truck, unpacks and restores them to the signals of original hierarchies. This describes the whole process of multiplexing low-rate signals of different hierarchies into SDH signals

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(STM-N), transmitting on the SDH network and disassembling into signals of their original hierarchies.

1.3 Disadvantages of SDH

One gain, one loss. The above advantages of SDH are achieved at the cost of certain aspects. 1. Low bandwidth utilization ratio As we know, effectiveness usually contradicts with reliability. Effectiveness increases at the cost of reliability, and vice versa. For instance, as selectivity of a radio increases, the available channels increase either. But the reliability will decrease because the passband becomes narrower and tone quality deteriorates as a result. One significant advantage of SDH is that system reliability is greatly enhanced (highly automatic OAM) since many overhead bytes for OAM function are employed in SDH signals ---- STM-N frame. To transmit the same amount of valid information, PDH signals occupy less frequency bandwidth (transmission rate) than SDH signals, i.e. PDH signals use lower rate. For example, SDH STM-1 signals can be multiplexed into 63 2Mb/s or 3 34Mb/s (equal to 48 2Mb/s) or 1 140Mb/s (equal to 64 2Mb/s) PDH signals. Only when multiplexing PDH signals into STM-1 signal frame with 140Mb/s signals can the STM-1 signal accommodate the information content of 64 2Mb/s. Its rate, up to 155Mb/s, is higher than PDH E4 signal (140Mb/s) containing the same amount of information. In other words, STM-1 occupies a frequency bandwidth larger than that needed by PDH E4 signals (they have the same amount of information). 2. Complex mechanism of pointer justification By directly dropping low-rate signals (e.g. 2Mb/s) from high-rate signals (e.g. STM1), SDH system eliminates the complex procedures of multilevel multiplexing/demultiplexing. Such a function is achieved via pointer justification The pointer constantly indicates the location of low-rate signals so that specific low-rate signals can be properly de-multiplexed in time of "unpacking". However, the pointer function increases the complexity of the system. Most of all, it generates a kind of special jitter in SDH system ---- a combined jitter caused by pointer justification. Such jitter usually occurs on the boundary of networks (SDH/PDH). Due to its low frequency and high amplitude, this jitter will deteriorateion the performance of low-rate signals being de-multiplexed. And such jitter is difficult to be filtered.

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3. Influence of excessive use of software on system security One of the features of SDH is its highly automatic OAM, which means that software constitutes a large proportiong in the system. As a result, SDH system is vulnerable to computer viruses which are rampant in modern world. In addition, manual misoperation and software fault on network layer are also fatal to the system. Security becomes a main consideration of the system. SDH hierarchy is a new thing. In spite of such-and-such disadvantages, SDH has shown powerful vitality in the development of transmission networks. The transition of the transmission networkds from PDH to SDH is definitely inevitable.

Questions:
What have you learned from this section? 1. What is SDH? 2. Why did the SDH transmission system emerge? 3. What are the advantages of SDH, compared with PDH? 4. What are the disadvantages of SDH? Have you got a general concept of SDH in mind?

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Summary
This section gives the technical background of the emargence of SDH system and the characteristics of SDH system. Its main purpose is to help readers to establish a general concept of SDH.

Exercises
1. Why is the SDH system suitable for large capacity transmission?

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