Assessment of Node- and Link- Level Blocking and Creating Cost-Effective Networks in the Era of Large Bandwidth Services

Shuhei YAMAKAMI  Masaki NIWA  Yojiro MORI  Hiroshi HASEGAWA  Ken-ichi SATO  Fumikazu INUZUKA  Akira HIRANO  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E102-B   No.3   pp.510-521
Publication Date: 2019/03/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.2018EBP3140
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Fiber-Optic Transmission for Communications
Keyword: 
networks,  photonic network,  wavelength routing,  optical cross-connect,  reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer,  

Full Text: FreePDF(3.9MB)

Summary: 
Link-level and node-level blocking in photonic networks has been intensively investigated for several decades and the C/D/C approach to OXCs/ROADMs is often emphasized. However, this understanding will have to change in the future large traffic environment. We herein elucidate that exploiting node-level blocking can yield cost-effective large-capacity wavelength routing networks in the near future. We analyze the impact of link-level and node-level blocking in terms of traffic demand and assess the fiber utilization and the amount of hardware needed to develop OXCs/ROADMs, where the necessary number of link fibers and that of WSSs are used as metrics. We clarify that the careful introduction of node-level blocking is the more effective direction in creating future cost effective networks; compared to C/D/C OXCs/ROADMs, it offers a more than 70% reduction in the number of WSSs while the fiber increment is less than ~2%.