Baseline analysis of the existing capacities and needs for capacity building for Marine Strategy Framework Directive implementation in the Celtic Seas sub-region.

This report evaluates the existing situation in the Celtic Seas sub-region and determines the current state of preparedness for transboundary management of marine ecosystems and MSFD implementation. Recommendations for capacity building are provided through the analysis of the existing conflicts and potential synergies between relevant policies, institutions and information resources for MSFD implementation across the region. This report strives to empower stakeholders through the provision of a sound baseline with accurate and up-to-date information on the current status of MSFD implementation, potential opportunities and suggested approaches for building capacities in their region and across the Celtic Seas. It is evident that there are a number of national marine planning processes currently underway and at different stages throughout the United Kingdom and the pre-planning context for MSP in Ireland. On a similar note, this evaluation of MSFD implementation progress to-date in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France highlights that each Member State has implemented the legal and procedural requirements of preparatory steps in differing manners and using different time scales. This variance across the sub-region has the potential to impact the achievement of GES by 2020 across the Celtic Seas.

SDN enabled dynamically reconfigurable high capacity optical access architecture for converged services

Dynamically reconfigurable time-division multiplexing (TDM) dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) long-reach passive optical networks (PONs) can support the reduction of nodes and network interfaces by enabling a fully meshed flat optical core. In this paper we demonstrate the flexibility of the TDM-DWDM PON architecture, which can enable the convergence of multiple service types on a single physical layer. Heterogeneous services and modulation formats, i.e. residential 10G PON channels, business 100G dedicated channel and wireless fronthaul, are demonstrated co-existing on the same long reach TDM-DWDM PON system, with up to 100km reach, 512 users and emulated system load of 40 channels, employing amplifier nodes with either erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) or semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). For the first time end-to-end software defined networking (SDN) management of the access and core network elements is also implemented and integrated with the PON physical layer in order to demonstrate two service use cases: a fast protection mechanism with end-to-end service restoration in the case of a primary link failure; and dynamic wavelength allocation (DWA) in response to an increased traffic demand.