Maximizing time-dependent spectrum sharing between neighbouring channels in CO-OFDM optical networks

For CO-OFDM-based networks, we develop an efficient wavelength indexing algorithm to maximally share optical spectrum between neighbouring channels through properly arranging lightpaths that have good match of spectrum usage as neighbours in the optical spectrum. Simulation studies indicated that the proposed algorithm can achieve much better optical spectrum efficiency than the conventional wavelength assignment algorithms such as random and first-fit algorithms, no matter under a single-link or an irregular mesh-network case.