Journal of Lasers, Optics & Photonics

Minimizing Blocking Probability in Elastic Optical Networks by Varying the Bandwidth Granularity Based on Optical Path Fragmentation

Abstract

Al-Tarawneh L and Taebi S

Elastic optical networks (EONs) based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) are considered a promising solution for the next optical network’s generation. It basically makes it possible to choose an adequate portion of the available spectrum to satisfy the requested capacity. In this paper, we consider the impact of spectrum fragmentation along the optical single/multipath routing transmission on the efficiency of the EONs. This involves reducing the fragmentation effects by dynamically updating and controlling the minimum bandwidth allocation granularity (g).We adopt linear and nonlinear dynamic mechanisms, which are denoted as LDAÃ?â?°Ã?¡ and NLDAÃ?â?°Ã?¡, respectively, to choose proper band width granularities that are proportional to the optical link/path bandwidth fragmentation status. In order to avoid neither splitting the capacity request over many routing paths, which would increase the management complexity, nor encouraging single path transmission, the proposed schemes aim to choose a proper bandwidth allocation granularity (g) of a predefined set of suggested values. Simulation results show that varying the bandwidth granularity based on the optical path fragmentation status can offer improved performance over fixed granularity with respect to the bandwidth blocking probability, the number of path splitting, the throughput, and differential delay constraint issue in terms of: the network bandwidth utilization and multipath distribution.