Efficient resource allocation of heterogeneous services in transparent optical networks

Feature Issue on Transmission in Optically Transparent Core NetworksTransparent optical networking provides a common optical transport platform for services with different bit rates, transmission formats, and technologies that is adaptive to varying traffic demands from either edge aggregation networks or high-bandwidth end users. This paper describes a method of efficiently allocating resources to heterogeneous services that have diverse optical performance requirements at 10 and 40Gbit/s in terms of tolerance to chromatic dispersion (CD) and optical signal-to-noise ratio degradations. We particularly focus on exploiting the wavelength-dependent nature of CD and demonstrate that by including such information in the routing subproblem and introducing a new just-enough wavelength assignment method, significant improvements in resource utilization can be obtained.