Leveraging adaptive modulation with multi-hop routing in elastic optical networks

The technology used for data transmission in optical networks is going through significant changes in response to the rapid growth of Internet traffic and emerging high performance applications, boosting research on how to satisfy the increasing demands with the available resources. In this scenario, the elastic optical networks paradigm enables improved provisioning through flexibility and scalability in spectrum assignment. This work proposes data and optical grooming and the use of spectral modulation control as a solution to the Routing, Modulation Level, and Spectrum Allocation problem in a dynamic traffic context. The proposed algorithm obtains the greatest spectrum aggregation possible using higher modulation levels through multiple hops in the virtual topology. Experiments show that this approach results in reduced blocking without impacting the use of the network’s resources.