Superchannel Multicasting Module Placement Algorithm Applied to Elastic Optical Networks

Abstract

The spectral fragmentation problem in elastic optical networks decreases the spectral usage provided by this technology. One way to tackle this problem is by the use of the optical inverse multiplexing technique based on superchannel multicasting (SM). This technique allows to fill the fragments presented in the network with requests, by either modifying the original central frequency of the request or by dividing the original request superchannel into discontiguous sets of slots, in part of the route. These two forms of SM usage are investigated in this paper, in order to evaluate the advantage of applying descontiguity. An algorithm for an efficient superchannel multicasting module distribution among the network nodes with this capability is the main subject of this article. The effectiveness of the heuristics is assessed by comparing its call request blocking probability with that provided by the uniform SM module distribution. We analyze three distinct topologies under multiple network loads and amount of SM modules. In all cases, our proposed module distribution provides reductions of 25% to 48% in the call request blocking probability when compared to the uniform SM module distribution.