Routing issues on spectrum sharing and partitioning for flexible optical networks

In this work we study the influence of the routing mechanisms when adopting a spectrum partitioning strategy in Flexible Optical Networks. Spectrum partitioning is considered because a complete sharing of the available spectrum cannot be implemented in the already deployed optical network. Spectrum partitioning allows the coexistence of different spectrum usage architectures. The spectrum partitioning strategy influences the service blocking probability as well as does the routing mechanism. Therefore, this influence should be considered for future studies aiming at service fairness, by considering path lengths for hybrid network architectures.