Reducing the CAPEX and OPEX Costs of Optical Backbone Networks

The focus of this paper is on the minimum cost resource provisioning and nodal equipment location PROVLOC problem for Wide Area Networks (OWANs), i.e., optical networks that cover broad areas. Minimizing the cost means minimizing the network capital and operational expenditures throughout the dimensioning of the nodal equipment, and the location of all-optical cross-connects, while granting all traffic requests. This is done thanks to large scale modeling and optimization tools relying on a scalable column generation method and an efficient rounding off heuristic. Experiments on various network and traffic instances show that a careful dimensioning and location of the nodal equipment can save up to 60% of the number of photonic cross-connects (PXCs), and even more sometimes.