Cost and power consumption model for flexible super-channel transmission with all-optical sub-channel add/drop capability

Flexible optical super-channel transmission is widely accepted today as the next step in the evolution towards high capacity core networks since it allows optimising the use of fibre resources by efficiently assigning spectrum and data rate tailored to the needs of end-to-end traffic demands. The emergence of new services supporting increasingly diverse data flows ranging from a few gigabits per second to terabits per second may however lead to the inappropriateness of super-channels to serve lower-rate traffic demands. Recent developments in switching technology have made it possible to perform all-optical processing of compactly multiplexed low-rate signals at intermediate nodes, thus bringing the benefit of both the superior spectral efficiency associated with super-channel transmission and the flexibility provided by lower data-rate single-carrier signals. To evaluate the potential benefits of the introduction of this new capability, a cost and power consumption evaluation of the enabling transceivers and ROADMs needs to be carried out. In this paper, we compare different transceiver and ROADM implementations and provide initial results regarding their viability in real national-scale networks.