On the Performance of Flexgrid-Based Optical Networks

The ever increasing IP traffic volume has finally brought to light the high inefficiency of current wavelength-routed rigid-grid networks in matching the client layer requirements. Such an issue results in the deployment of large-size, expensive and power-consuming IP/MPLS layers to perform the required grooming/aggregation functionality. To deal with this problem, the emerging flexgrid technology, allowing for reduced size frequency grids, usually referred to as frequency slot, has recently attracted great attention among network operators, component and equipment suppliers, and the research community. In this paper, we report the main contributions performed in the context of EU STRONGEST project regarding flexgrid optical networks.