Dynamic Routing, Wavelength Assignment, and Spectrum Allocation in Transparent Flexible Optical WDM Networks

Due to emerging heterogeneous applications, the traffic in metro optical networks is becoming more dynamic with diverse granularities. The Flexible Optical WDM (FWDM) network architecture can support such heterogeneous line rates with finer granularities by provisioning channels with flexible spectrum allocation to leverage spectral and wavelength efficiencies. In this paper, we introduce the dynamic routing, wavelength assignment, and spectrum allocation problem for the first time. We propose an efficient greedy algorithm, and evaluate the the performance of the FWDM architecture with the conventional fixed grid WDM network architecture in terms of blocking probability and network throughput. Results show that the proposed architecture improves network blocking probability and throughput compared to fixed grid networks.