Online connection provisioning in metro optical WDM networks using reconfigurable OADMs

Optical add/drop multiplexers (OADMs) can significantly reduce the cost of metro optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) ring networks by allowing traffic to bypass intermediate nodes without expensive opto-electro-opto (O-E-O) conversion. Some traditional OADMs, called fixed OADMs (FOADMs), can only add/drop traffic on a specific wavelength. Reconfigurable OADMs (ROADMs) are emerging, which can add/drop traffic onto/from different wavelengths at different time. ROADMs provide desirable flexibility, enable fast provisioning of dynamic traffic, and save capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx). In order to be cost effective, some ROADMs employ architectures that tune the ROADM continuously from one wavelength to another, crossing through all the wavelengths in between, which may cause interference to the connections, if any, on those wavelengths being crossed. In order to prevent existing connections from being interrupted, a constraint needs to be imposed that ROADMs cannot cross working wavelengths when tuning. In this paper, the design and the benefits of metro optical WDM network architectures using ROADMs and the impact of this tuning constraint on the performance of the network are investigated. The dynamic traffic provisioning problem is analyzed and divided into two subproblems: 1) a traditional one on resource allocation; and 2) a new subproblem on tuning-head positioning (TP). Several heuristics for each subproblem are developed to combat the tuning constraint. Results from our simulation experiments show that the tuning constraint can significantly affect the network performance in terms of overall connection blocking probability, and good heuristics for network control and management are needed to overcome this tuning constraint.