First Proof-of-Concept Demonstration of OpenFlow- Controlled Elastic Optical Networks Employing Flexible Transmitter/Receiver

In this paper, for the first time, we experimentally demonstrate an OpenFlow-controlled elastic optical network (EON) employing a flexible transmitter/receiver. The flexible transmitter can switch the symbol rate and modulation format of the optical signal without modifying the hardware, and the flexible receiver can automatically detect different modulation formats and measure the bit-error rate (BER) for lightpath diagnosis. By using an OpenFlow-based control plane with significant protocol extensions, we successfully verify the seamless interworking between the control plane and all the network elements, and experimentally validate elastic path provisioning, dynamic service recovery and lightpath restoration on an actual EON testbed. Keywords-OpenFlow; control plane; elastic optical networks (EON); flexible transmitter/receiver; modulation format