Design Considerations for Energy-Efficient Multi-Granular Optical Networks

Multi-Granular Optical Networks (MG-ONs) offer enhanced bandwidth utilization, reduced transmission cost and increased scalability in the optical Internet backbone. There have been several proposals for optimized design of MG-ONs as power consumption in the Internet backbone has recently become an important concern. Although recent research has shown that multi-granular switching concept can guarantee energy savings when compared to the traditional traffic grooming, MG-ON design still calls for legitimate and self-contained design specifications. In this paper, we revisit the Routing and Multi-Granular Path Assignment (RMGPA) problem by having the objective of minimized power consumption. Heuristic solutions of RMGPA problem show that crucial power and cost savings can be achieved with the proper selection of the wavelength capacity, waveband size and number of wavebands per fiber with a certain fiber capacity.