Energy efficiency of elastic frequency grids in multilayer IP/MPLS-over-flexgrid networks

Flexgrid Optical Networks provide higher spectrum efficiency and flexibility in comparison to traditional wavelength switched optical networks (WSON) due to the finer granularity in managing communication channels at the WDM layer, thus allowing beyond 100 Gbps transmission capabilities. They also promise allocating part of the traffic aggregation function to the optical layer, thus reducing the use of energy-hungry electronic devices. Accordingly, in this work, we analyzed these architectures from the power consumption perspective by evaluating the energy efficiency derived from introducing the Flexgrid technology in order to allow the shift of grooming and bandwidth aggregation functions at the optical layer, by envisioning a next generation of IP/MPLS-over-flexgrid transport architectures.