Trinity College Dublin announces the launch of the €1.3 million ‘Twilight’ project, aiming to revolutionise optical networks with cutting-edge digital twin technology, enabling rapid and disruption-free advancements.
Minister for the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Patrick O’Donovan TD, has recently announced 28 funding awards valued at €34 million to support research across seven Higher Education Institutions.
One of the awarded projects is Twilight: Twin Lightpaths, A Digital Twin Framework For Full Automation Of Disaggregated Optical Networks. Marco Ruffini, Professor at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Principal Investigator in the CONNECT Centre, and lead author of the project proposal, emphasises the project’s transformative potential:
“Optical networks are the lifeblood of the internet. They must evolve to support the ever-increasing usage of the internet and digital innovations like Smart Cities and Virtual/Augmented Reality. Twilight’s digital twin project will ensure safe, rapid advancements without network disruption.
We are grateful to Minister O’Donovan for supporting this important initiative. I would also like to thank our colleagues from HEAnet and GÉANT who supported us and are going to be collaborating with us on this project.”
HEAnet, Ireland’s National Education and Research Network, manages a national optical network of over 2,500 km, which is a central part of Ireland’s national research infrastructure. HEAnet has collaborated with the SFI Connect Centre over many years, providing connectivity services and research demonstrations on the HEAnet production network. .
In 2022, HEAnet connected directly to Prof. Ruffini’s Open Ireland test network at Trinity College Dublin. This has provided Prof. Ruffini’s group with access to the production HEAnet optical network while also enabling HEAnet to gain valuable insights into the characteristics of the HEAnet production network. HEAnet connects to the GÉANT pan-European research and education network in both Dublin and Cork. The Twilight project will provide optical connectivity from the Open Ireland test bed to the GÉANT optical network via the HEAnet network for the first time.
Eoin Kenny, Innovation and R&D Manager at HEAnet, highlights the project’s efficiency:
“Planning network changes has always been challenging. Twilight’s digital twin will streamline this process, save time and help HEAnet to optimise our network resources.
We are very pleased with the work carried out on the OpenIreland research infrastructure and look forward to continuing this close collaboration.”
HEAnet is a member of GÉANT, the collaboration of European National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), who interconnects Europe’s NRENs with the high bandwidth, high speed and highly resilient pan-European backbone, together connecting Europe’s researchers, academics and students to each other, and linking them to over half the countries in the world.
Guy Roberts, Senior Transport Network Architect at GÉANT also expressed enthusiasm for the Twilight project:
“The future for anyone working with optical networks looks bright with all the new technologies on our side. We are continually dealing with the issues of dynamic provisioning of optical paths. Despite making extensive use of optical equipment vendors’ planning tools, we have discovered anomalous situations that can lead to some level of service disruption.
GÉANT will work with TCD and HEAnet to provide measurements to train the digital twin algorithms, help with any fine-tuning and carry out experiments on the use cases we have jointly defined.”
To learn more about the Twilight project or to get involved, contact marco.ruffini@tcd.ie.