Power and cost reduction in optical transport networks by Multi-Granular switching with optical reach consideration

Multi-Granular (MG) switching concept has emerged as a strong candidate to alleviate the scalability problems of the conventional optical switching that will result from the expected exponential traffic growth in the optical transport networks. On the other hand, this tremendous increase in the bandwidth demands will also introduce the energy bottleneck in the transport networks. Furthermore, significant contribution of the telecommunication networks to the Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GGE) has appeared as another challenge to be met in network design and planning policies. In this paper, considering the benefits of MG switching in the optical backbone, we study the benefit of employing the MG switching concept in the transport networks in terms of energy savings. Under various scenarios, our numerical results present realistic design specifications for MG optical transport networks by efficiently integrating the optical reach limitation into the design and planning problem.