Impact of optical regeneration on dynamic elastic optical networks

Abstract

In this paper, we have investigated the impact of optical regeneration on elastic optical networks that are capable of providing dynamically optical paths with flexible bandwidths. We have evaluated and compared the performance, in terms of the overall blocking probability and the total accommodated traffic volume, of three possible network scenarios with regeneration capability including 1) no regeneration, 2) 3R regeneration and 3) 4R regeneration for practical network topologies. Numerical simulation proved that using optical regenerators can help to exploit elastic optical networking and enhance the network performance for provisioning dynamically bandwidth-flexible lightpath services. At least 29.8% (or 45.6%) more traffic volume can be obtained for NSF (or USNET) network. It is also verified that using re-modulation function while regenerating optical signals can further improve the performance of networks. However, optical regenerators are costly devices, especially all-optical ones, and more functional regenerators are more expensive. Therefore, a trade-off between the performance enhancement and the necessary regenerator cost needs to be carefully considered to create future cost-effective, bandwidth-abundant and flexible optical networks.