Impact of energy-efficient techniques on a device lifetime

This paper focuses on the impact that energy-efficient techniques have on the component lifetime in optical backbone networks. The study presented in the paper considers in particular the influence that green routing strategies have on the failure rate of Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers (EDFAs), i.e., if their lifetime is positively or negatively impacted when putting them into sleep mode in order to reduce their energy consumption. To this end, the paper proposes a model that estimates the failure rate acceleration factor as a function of: (i) for how long and how frequently a device is switched into sleep mode, and (ii) hardware parameters that characterize the device. The proposed model is then evaluated by considering an energy-efficient Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) strategy that targets saving energy by putting EDFAs into sleep mode. The results presented in the paper show that energy-efficient techniques may have the potential to lower the failure rate of EDFAs. However, this is true only under specific conditions, i.e., an energy-efficient strategy needs to be carefully planned in order to avoid frequent power state transitions, which result in shortening the lifetime of an EDFA.