Capacity efficiency of sub-wavelength traffic grooming in IP over Quasi-CWDM optical networks (invited)

We proposed a new Quasi-CWDM optical network architecture which is spectrum efficient and cost effective [1]. Similar to the traditional DWDM network, the new network architecture does not require expensive flex-grid wavelength selective switches (WSSs), but can support optical super-channels using fixed quasi-coarse WDM grids, of which each spans at least 200 GHz. For each optical super-channel in the Quasi-CWDM network, different modulation formats can be adaptively used based on their bit-rate requirements and channel physical conditions. In [1], we have evaluated the performance of the Quasi-CWDM network architecture from the cost perspective. In this study, we will evaluate the performance for the Quasi-CWDM optical network in terms of capacity efficiency. We consider sub-wavelength traffic grooming in an IP over Quasi-CWDM network. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model is developed to maximize the total served IP traffic demand. In addition, the capacity efficiency is evaluated through discrete event simulations to find bandwidth blocking probability when using the Quasi-CWDM network to provision dynamic sub-wavelength traffic demand. The results show that the Quasi-CWDM network is more capacity-efficient than the DWDM optical network to accommodate more sub-wavelength traffic demand and shows the lowest bandwidth blocking probability under different minimum elastic channel bandwidths while having a lower hardware cost than the elastic optical network (EON).