Energy-efficient software-defined AWGR-based PON data center network

In this paper, we present our results on tackling the oversubscription issue in the inter-cell communication in the Arrayed Waveguide PON based data center architecture proposed in our recent work. We enhance the bandwidth allocation by introducing 2-tiers of AWGRs to facilitate multipath routing and energy-efficient utilisation of resources. We also employ a centralized Software Defined Network (SDN) control and management system to coordinate and arbitrate the channel access for communication through the OLT links with PONs via wavelength reconfiguration and energy-efficient grooming. A benchmarking study between the proposed SDN architecture against the decentralized conventional design shows that with the SDN enabled architecture, the power consumption can be decreased by up to 90% for typical average data rates while maintaining zero blocking.