26 March 2020

SDH advantages and disadvantages

SDH stands for Synchronous digital hierarchy and SONET stands for the synchronous optical network (SONET) which refers to a group of fiber-optic transmission rate systems that can transport digital signals with different capacities. SDH allows data stream with low bit rates to be combined into the high rate data stream. The entire network is synchronous, individual bitstreams can be embedded into and extracted from high rate data streams relatively easily. Here this article gives the advantages and disadvantages of SDH to better understand this topic.

Benefits and advantages of SDH:
  • It is capable of transporting broadcast signals.
  • It is multivendor and supports different operators.
  • The capacity for transporting existing PDH signals.
  • More simplified multiplexing and demultiplexing technique.
  • SDH allows for quick recovery from failure.
  • Switching protection to traffic is offered by rings.
  • It has strong NMS.
  • It is easy to interconnect with different networks.
  • Optical fiber bandwidth can be suddenly increased without limit in SDH.
  • Synchronous networking and SDH supports multipoint networking.
  • It is a flexible and self-healing network.
  • Easy growth to higher bit rates which is enhanced to the administration and maintenance process.

Drawback or disadvantages of SDH:

  • It can not carry E2 due to the unavailability of the container.
  • It requires complicated SDH equipment due to a variety of management traffic types and options.
  • It offers a lower bandwidth utilization ratio compare to PDH due to many OH bytes used for OAM.
  • Software is used largely is the SDH system. Hence it is vulnerable to computer viruses.
  • Direct adding/ dropping of lower rate signals is archived using pointers. This increases the complexity of the system.
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