Single and Mixed Line Rate Variation for Dedicated Protection in Elastic Optical Networks

Abstract

WDM is a multiplexing technique of data transmission in which it divides the huge transmission bandwidth available on a fiber into several non-overlapping wavelength channels and enables data transmission over these channels simultaneously. WDM systems enable to increase the capacity of the network without laying additional fiber. In our research study, we have focused on survivability approach, specifically, dedicated protection method in WDM optical networks that received much attention in the research community nowadays. Elastic optical (or flexgrid) networks (EONs) have recently been introduced to use the frequency spectrum more efficiently. 12.5 GHz fine granular frequency slots or flexible grids are used for setting up lightpaths instead of using 50 GHz or 100 GHz fixed grid spacing in EON. Our objective in this paper is to investigate variation of the spectrum efficiency of traditional shared protection and elastic optical networks using MLR in various scenarios.