# Enhancing Tactile Internet Reliability: AI-Driven Resilience in NG-EPON Networks
## 4 Proposed Architecture  
This section discusses the proposed smart resilience architecture that not only can detect and localize fiber faults but also automatically establish connections while waiting for the engineer to fix the fiber faults in the ODN. In this architecture, we use the SEBA for Residential Services Central Office Rearchitected as Datacenter (R-CORD) platform concept, which sits in the middle and provides management and abstraction solutions, enabling the use of white box hardware. White box hardware reduces both Capital expenditures (CAPEX) and Operation & Maintenance expenses (OPEX). In this way, we separate the software from the hardware, enhancing the agility that brings the best of the cloud Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and SDN together. The OLT and ONUs used in the proposed architecture are white box hardware, providing a highly flexible and cost-effective solution. The white box devices feature hardware platforms that can run third-party software, such as VOLTHA, which offers open programmability and interoperability. Figure 4 shows the smart resilience architecture in NG-EPON. In the north part, the OLT is connected to VOLTHA, an SDN controller such as the ONOS and NEM. These components incorporate one another using APIs and Remote Procedure Calls (gRPC) to provide seamless communication between VOLTHA, SDN controllers, and the NEM. As already mentioned, VOLTHA will activate the OLT and add to its logical switch. Moreover, the ONUs will also be added to the logical switch by VOLTHA. The SDN controllers provide centralized control and management for dynamic traffic steering, automatic failover, and real-time network adjustment. The OTDR, located at the central office, detects and localizes fiber faults, while the BER analyzer at the business users' side captures eye diagrams to detect anomalies. Furthermore, in the south part, the users are categorized into two different groups: business users and residential users. Usually, business users have very strict SLAs and requirements. Therefore, as shown in the figure, business users such as ONU\({}_{1}\) and ONU\({}_{2}\) have the resilience area (indicated by the red dashed circle) which will be covered with the Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG). The RFoG serves as a critical backup mechanism for business users in the event of a fiber fault. The RFoG allows RF signals to be transmitted over fiber optic cables, maintaining compatibility while providing the benefits of fiber optics, such as higher bandwidth and lower latency. In the proposed architecture, RFoG is activated as a secondary communication path when the primary fiber link experiences a fault or anomaly. The failover process is handled automatically by the ONU and the SDN controller, ensuring that the RFoG backup link is ready to carry traffic when needed. This mechanism will maintain continuous service, minimize downtime, and enhance overall network resilience. In normal conditions, ONUs send/receive data using the primary optical path (\(\uplambda\)1, \(\uplambda\)2). The SDN controller monitors the network performance such as Bit Error Rate (BER) and OTDR trace analysis. Network operators oversee the network using a centralized platform, i.e., the NEM, which provides dashboards, alerts, and reports for network operators. In our proposed architecture, edge computing is realized in the NEM. This integration edge computing is to receive incoming data in real-time, identify any potential issues, and perform real-time analysis and alerts. Edge computing within the NEM can be implemented using high-performance servers equipped with GPUs for accelerated AI processing. Typically,Kafka is used to stream the collected data (telemetry data) from the NEM to the edge computing device. One study [34] has shown that a Kafka-based framework is highly scalable and can support up to around 4000 messages per second with low CPU load and achieve an end-to-end latency of about 50 ms.