Dynamic resource pooling and trading mechanism in flexible-grid optical network virtualization

Optical networks are ideal candidates for the future intra- and inter-data center networks, due to their merits of high throughput, low energy consumption, high reliability, and so on. Optical network virtualization is a key technology to realize the deployment of various types of network-based applications on a single optical network infrastructure. Current virtual optical network embedding allocates resources in an exclusive and excessive manner. Typically, the spectrum amount of the virtual optical network´s peak traffic is reserved along the optical paths. It may lead to high user cost and low carrier revenue. In this paper, we propose a dynamic resource pooling and trading mechanism, in which users do no need to reserve the spectrum amount of their peak traffic demands. We compare the user cost and carrier revenue of our dynamic mechanism with the traditional exclusive resource allocation, by formulating our mechanism as a Stackelberg game and finding the Subgame Perfect Equilibrium. The numerical results show that our proposed dynamic mechanism can save user cost while increase carrier revenue under certain conditions.