Flexibility and fragmentation aware routing, core and spectrum allocation for hybrid AoD nodes in SDM-EONs.

Abstract

Space division multiplexing elastic optical network (SDM-EON) enables high-capacity transmission, in which the network nodes should provide high switching flexibility while limiting the complexity and costs of nodes. Architecture on demand (AoD) nodes can meet these requirements but the slow configuration time of optical backplane in AoD nodes makes it difficult to serve latency-sensitive requests. In this paper, we propose a hybrid optical backplane based on micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) switches to provide fast configuration time for AoD nodes. Moreover, we propose quantitative measures of node switching flexibility in SDM-EONs and of link configuration speed in AoD nodes. Based on the hybrid backplane architecture and the measurement approaches, we propose a flexibility and fragmentation aware routing, spectrum and core allocation algorithm and an AoD synthesis algorithm. Simulation results show that the hybrid AoD nodes with support of spatial lane change can reduce network blocking probability. The AoD based on this hybrid backplane structure can improve the network performance by 32.8% compared to the AoD based on the traditional MEMS. Compared with traditional reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs), the hybrid AoD nodes can control the number of wavelength selective switch (WSS) ports.