The rise of traffic intensive services and applications is pushing the limits of conventional single band Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) optical networks. As an answer to this challenge, new data plane technologies are being investigated. Multi-band optical networks have raised as a very interesting candidate due to the potential increased capacity they offer thanks to the exploitation of multiple bands of the optical spectrum. Considering the whole telecom ecosystem, multi-band optical networks will coexist with other technological segments (e.g., Radio Access Network (RAN)) with the aim of provisioning services across the end-to-end infrastructure. With the advent of 5G and beyond 5G (B5G) architectures, novel provisioning paradigms are taking preponderance, such as the case of network slicing, which represents a radical paradigm change with respect to legacy business and provisioning models. As such, proper solutions for supporting network slice provisioning and runtime maintenance at the data plane are required. With this in mind, in this paper we present a control and orchestration architecture for the configuration and maintenance of network slices in multi-band optical networks, in support of B5G end-to-end services. Indeed, quality assurance and maintenance at all levels is seen as a cornerstone in B5G architectures. Thus, proper mechanisms adapted to the nature of the underlying sliceable multi-band data plane are required to ensure the quality of deployed slices. In this regard, we also present a novel band-adaptive protection scheme which takes advantage of the properties of the multi-band data plane so as to enhance the robustness of slices against quality degradations. We showcase the provisioning and maintenance of multi-band optical network slices by means of an experimental demonstration in a real testbed deployed at our premises. In addition, we evaluate the performance of the proposed band-adaptive protection scheme for slice quality assurance in front of other strategies by means of extensive simulation analysis in larger network scenarios.

流量密集型服务和应用的兴起正在推动传统单波段波分复用 (WDM) 光网络的极限。为了应对这一挑战，正在研究新的数据平面技术。多波段光网络已经成为一个非常有趣的候选者，因为多波段光网络由于利用了光谱的多个波段而提供了潜在的增加容量。考虑到整个电信生态系统，多频段光网络将与其他技术部分（例如无线电接入网络 (RAN)）共存，目的是在端到端基础设施中提供服务。随着 5G 和超 5G (B5G) 架构的出现，新颖的配置范式正在占据优势，例如网络切片的情况，这代表了对遗留业务和配置模型的根本范式改变。因此，需要适当的解决方案来支持数据平面的网络切片配置和运行时维护。考虑到这一点，在本文中，我们提出了一种控制和编排架构，用于配置和维护多频段光网络中的网络切片，以支持 B5G 端到端服务。事实上，各级质量保证和维护被视为 B5G 架构的基石。因此，需要适应底层可分片多频带数据平面性质的适当机制，以确保部署分片的质量。在这方面，我们还提出了一种新颖的频带自适应保护方案，它利用多频带数据平面的特性来增强切片对质量下降的鲁棒性。我们通过在部署在我们场所的真实试验台中进行的实验演示来展示多波段光网络切片的配置和维护。此外，我们通过在更大的网络场景中进行广泛的仿真分析，评估了所提出的用于切片质量保证的频带自适应保护方案在其他策略之前的性能。