Dynamic source aggregation of subwavelength connections in elastic optical networks

Abstract

Elastic optical network technologies arise as promising solutions for future high-speed optical transmission, since they can provide superior flexibility and scalability in spectrum allocation toward the seamless support of diverse services along with the rapid growth of Internet traffic. In elastic optical networks, heterogeneous traffic demands are typically supported by a single type of bandwidth-variable transmitters, which is not always spectrum and cost-efficient. In light of this, the aggregation of same source but different destination subwavelength connections has been recently introduced for elastic optical networks, aiming to obtain both transmitter and spectrum usage savings. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for dynamic source aggregation of connections. Moreover, we introduce a novel node architecture enabling the realization of the proposed source aggregation in a cost-effective way. The obtained results demonstrate considerable improvement in the network spectrum utilization, as well as a significant reduction in the number of necessary transmitters per node.