Abstract
Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (O-OFDM), which transmits high speed optical signals using multiple spectrally overlapped lower-speed subcarriers, is a promising candidate for supporting future elastic optical networks. In contrast to previous works which focus on Coherent Optical OFDM (CO-OFDM), in this paper, we consider the direct-detection optical OFDM (DDO-OFDM) as the transport technique, which leads to simpler hardware and software realizations, potentially offering a low-cost solution for elastic optical networks, especially in metro networks, and short or medium distance core networks. Based on this network scenario, we design and deploy a software-defined networking (SDN) control plane enabled by extending OpenFlow, detailing the network architecture, the routing and spectrum assignment algorithm, OpenFlow protocol extensions and the experimental validation. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that an OpenFlow-based control plane is reported and its performance is quantitatively measured in an elastic optical network with DDO-OFDM transmission.
Highlights
An elastic optical network, which is able to dynamically and adaptively allocate the necessary optical spectrum according to the traffic demand, the selected modulation format and path conditions, has been proposed to efficiently utilize network spectrum resources [1]
In an elastic optical network, the optical spectrum is partitioned into basic fixed-size spectrum slots or slices (e.g., 6.25 GHz or 12.5 GHz) and spectrum ranges are adaptively allocated to bandwidth-variable optical connections
The second solution is based on Software-Defined Networking (SDN), in particular, the OpenFlow [8] architecture, which uses a centralized controller (e.g. NOX [9]) to perform both RSA computation and path provisioning
Summary
An elastic optical network, which is able to dynamically and adaptively allocate the necessary optical spectrum according to the traffic demand, the selected modulation format and path conditions (e.g., physical length or optical impairments), has been proposed to efficiently utilize network spectrum resources [1]. The second solution is based on Software-Defined Networking (SDN), in particular, the OpenFlow [8] architecture, which uses a centralized controller (e.g. NOX [9]) to perform both RSA computation and path provisioning. The first extended OpenFlow-based control plane for an elastic optical network has been presented in [13], focusing on the protocol extensions and overall feasibility validation. Further studies regarding software-defined elastic optical networks have investigated the control of flexible transmitters [14], integration with Path Computation Elements (PCE) [15], interoperability with optical performance monitors [16], inter-datacenter connections [17], and field trial demonstration [18]. In this paper, we consider an elastic optical network with DDO-OFDM transmission as the network scenario, and we design and deploy an OpenFlow-based control plane on top of it, assessing its overall feasibility and quantitatively evaluating its performance.
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