Continuity Aware Spectrum Allocation Schemes for Virtual Optical Network Embedding in Elastic Optical Networks

• Continuity constraint is considered for Virtual Optical Network (VON) embedding.
• VON requests are classified according to VON users’ requirement for continuity.
• Continuity-aware schemes are proposed to allocate spectrum resource adaptively.

Optical network virtualization has been studied as a promising technique for optical network resources provisioning. In the virtualization context of Elastic Optical Network (EON), Virtual Optical Network Embedding (VONE) is investigated as a key issue for allocating spectrum resources to VON requests. This paper discusses the continuity constraint for the VONE problem in EONs, and presents three continuity-aware spectrum allocation schemes according to strict and relaxed continuity constraints. We have demonstrated the proposed schemes on emulated testbed to verify the feasibility of composing VON with discontiguous spectrum resources. Additionally, the performances of the proposed schemes are compared via simulation in terms of blocking probability, spectrum resource utilization and discontinuity degree.