A scalable design of multigranularity optical cross-connects for the next-generation optical Internet

This paper proposes a scalable design for next-generation optical cross-connects (OXCs). We present a novel strategy for dimensioning the switching capability as a long term planning. Switching fabrics in OXCs have to be expanded according to traffic growth, which may incur a scalability problem due to the exponentially increasing cost in manufacturing and maintenance. The proposed scheme expands the switching capacity of OXCs with waveband- and fiber-switching components (or, equivalently, expands the network capacity with waveband- and fiber-switching tiers). To minimize the number of extra fibers for waveband- and fiber-switching tiers required to satisfy a given traffic matrix, we formulate the problem of routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) with tunnel allocation (RWAT) into a constraint programming (CP) process. The CP is simplified as two integer linear programming (ILP) processes that are performed sequentially. Experiments are conducted on four examples to compare the throughput and the number of switching points when different switching architectures are adopted under different traffic increase. The benefits of our approach are demonstrated. Finally, we conclude that the proposed optimization scheme can dimension the networks with expandability and scalability to the growing traffic demand.