6 SDH Network Elements

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6.1 Synchronous Equipment .................................................................................... 3

6.2 Add/Drop ............................................................................................................ 4
6.3 Drop and Continue ............................................................................................. 5
6.4 Wide Band Digital Cross Connect....................................................................... 6
6.5 Flexible Multiplexer............................................................................................. 7
6.6 SDH Network Configuration................................................................................ 8

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6.1 Synchronous Equipment

SDH uses synchronous network equipment and can therefore save space and
energy in comparison with plesiochronous techniques. The simplest SDH link
consists of two terminal multiplexers that are linked together by fibre cable.
The regenerator replaces the Regenrator section overhead bytes before retransmitting the signal. The multiplex section overhead, path overhead and payload
are not altered.

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6.2 Add/Drop

One of the major advantages of SDH is its ability to add and drop tributaries directly
from higher-order aggregate bit streams.
You can access the whole VC4 container, a tributary unit group or the smallest
element. Although network elements are standardized on the STM-N level there
may be differences in the features. SDH enables full flexibilty for vendoors of
network equipment.

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6.3 Drop and Continue

SDH allows drop and continue which is a key feature for telephony and cable TV
applications. Imagine a scenario where a video stream is broadcasted from Munich
to Nuremburg and Hamburg.
Without drop and continue functionality the frame had to be sent twice; one for
Nuremburg and one for Hamburg. When applying drop and continue the video
stream needs to be sent from Munich only one time. When the SDH frame reaches
a node it is duplicated. In our example one copy would be transmitted to Nuremburg
while the original frame continues its journey to Hamburg.

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6.4 Wide Band Digital Cross Connect

A SDH cross-connect is used to interconnect payloads at different levels of the

aggregation hierarchy. Usually the interface accesses the STM-1 signal and then
combines payloads at a specific level. This way high and low bandwith services can
be seperated. Imagine two TU-12 containers that both contain video-streams. The
video-streams can now be concentrated in one STM-1 packet and can be
transmitted via a high-speed connection.
The functionality is comparable to the add-drop mechanism but cross-connect can
cope with a much larger number of STM-1s.

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6.5 Flexible Multiplexer

Another important SDH network element is the flexible multiplexer. It may be

thought of as a concentrator for low-speed services. Traffic concentration is
important because if we look at our example again, the low speed services would
need 8 lines in total. The concentrated STM-1 packet holds all the information from
the individual services but needs only a single line
At the receiving end of the transmission path a demeultiplexer takes the STM-1
frame. The low speed services are unpacked and can be transported to their final
destination.

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6.6 SDH Network Configuration

Let's have a look at the network topologies. As we saw some modules ago the
simplest structure of a SDH network is a point to point link. This configuration can
also be used as synchronous island in an asynchronous network. If we insert an
add-drop multiplexer we receive a point to multi-point connection. This avoids the
network of demultiplexing, cross-connecting, adding and droping channels.
Mesh architectures are applied in very large networks and where it is likely that the
structure will grow. A cross-connect function concentrates traffic at a central site and
allows easy re-provisioning of the circuits.
Another SDH network structure is the ring architecture. It is constructed with adddrop elements and enables uni- or bi-directional traffic. The main advantage of the
ring topology is its survivability. If one fibre is damaged traffic can be redirected
using other connections.

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