Spectral, cost and energy efficiencies analysis in WDM MLR networks with OTN switching

The application of OTN switching can bring significant improvements in the resource utilization to conventional WDM networks. In this paper, spectral, cost and energy efficiencies have been comprehensively analyzed in optical core networks by introducing OTN switching on top of the WDM layer with mixed line rate transmissions for both dedicated protection 1+1 (DP 1+1) and unprotected network scenarios. The simulation results show remarkable performance improvements by solely installing OTN switching matrices in the optical core nodes and applying grooming. More specifically, in the Spanish core network model of Telefónica I+D, the spectral efficiency can be improved by up to 567 and 288%, the cost efficiency 564 and 265%, the energy efficiency 1335 and 423%, compared to the conventional WDM networks for protected and unprotected scenarios, respectively.