Investigation of cost, power, and spectral efficiency in fixed- and flexi-grid networks

Abstract

With the steady growth of traffic volume in core networks, it is predicted that future optical network communication will be constrained mainly by cost and power consumption. Thus, for Internet sustainability, it will be necessary to ensure cost and power efficiency in optical networks. The aims of this study are (i) to identify the main sources of cost and power consumption in fixed-grid (SLR and MLR) and flexi-grid (OFDM) optical networks, and (ii) to compare techniques for improving cost and power efficiency in SLR/MLR- and OFDM-based networks. To this end, we conducted a comparative analysis of cost and power efficiency for the OFDM- and MLR/SLR-based networks, and considering realistic networks, evaluated the cost and power consumed by different components in the optical layer. Our results show that (i) OFDM-based networks outperform those based on MLR/SLR in terms of both cost and power-efficiency, (ii) the extra equipment cost incurred due to under-utilization of spectrum is reduced by switching to a flexi-grid network, (iii) lower power consumption per bit is obtained when the networking solution ensures a finer bit-rate granularity, and (iv) there exists a power and spectrum minimization trade-off that is network characteristic dependent.