Cost-effective single-hub WDM ring networks: A proposal and analysis

In this paper, we study a new concept of traffic grooming in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) ring networks that aims at eliminating both the bandwidth underutilization and the scalability concerns that are typical of all-optical wavelength routed ring networks. Our objective is to reduce the network cost while preserving the benefits of all-optical WDM ring networks. In order to assess the efficiency of our proposal, all underlying network costs are compared. These costs include that of the transceivers required at node level, as well as the number of wavelengths. Our results show that the proposed aggregation technique can significantly improve the resource utilization while reducing the network cost.