Universal Hash Based Built-In Secure Transport in FlexE Over WDM Networks

Flexible Ethernet (FlexE) over WDM transport is one of the key technologies for achieving high-speed next generation radio access network (NG-RAN). The security issue, such as optical fiber wiretap, becomes increasingly prominent. However, optical or electrical layer secure strategies cannot support higher rate and lower overhead transport, respectively. To this end, in this paper, we propose a cross-layer secure transport strategy in end-to-end FlexE over WDM networks, which leverages Universal Hashing based FlexE data block permutation and multiple parallel fiber transmission to achieve anti-eavesdropping. Different levels of attack ability are considered for measuring the impact on network security and resources utilization. Furthermore, the trade-off between efficient resources utilization and guarantee of higher level of transport security is also explored through building an integer linear programming (ILP) model. For the computation complexity of ILP model at large scale input conditions, a Security and resource-Efficiency-oriented Ant Colony optimization algorithm (SEAC) is proposed. Simulation results show that the cross-layer defense strategy is effective to struggle against intruders with different levels of attack ability, and the SEAC algorithm can achieve near-optimal performance and outperform the traditional first-fit algorithm.