Low-Crosstalk-Margin Routing for Spectrally-Spatially Flexible Optical Networks

Abstract

In multicore fiber (MCF) equipped spectrally-spatially flexible optical networks (SS-FONs), the inter-core crosstalk (XT) affects quality of transmission (QoT) of lightpaths if it exceeds threshold XT ( $XT_{th}$ ). Thus, XT-management is of predominant concern in SS-FONs. In this work, we exploit the spatial dimension (i.e., core) of SS-FONs to calculate XT-aware routes, and propose a novel low-crosstalk-margin (LCM) routing scheme. The proposed LCM routing offers a proactive approach of XT-management, where two-dimensional (2D) routes leveraging core-switching are calculated and prioritized offline on the basis of XT-margins. Simulations indicate that the proposed LCM routing achieves up to 53.6% and 60.5% higher lightpath establishment as compared to the existing proactive XT-management methods, namely, XT-Avoid, and WC-XT, respectively. Further, the proposed LCM routing obtains near-optimal performance without the need of complex calculations that are performed dynamically by the optimal SXT-Check method.