Congestion aware routing in nonlinear elastic optical networks

In elastic optical networks, digital coherent transceivers modify their symbol rate, modulation format, and forward error correction to best serve the network demands. In a nonlinear elastic optical network, these parameters are inherently coupled with the routing algorithm. We propose to use congestion aware routing in a nonlinear elastic optical network and demonstrate its efficacy for the NSFNET reference network (14 nodes, 22 links). The network is sequentially loaded with 100 GbE demands until a demand becomes blocked, this procedure being repeated 10000 times to estimate the network blocking probability (NBP). Three routing algorithms are considered: 1) shortest path routing; 2) simple congestion aware algorithm; and 3) weighted congestion aware routing algorithm with 50, 25, 12.5, and 6.25 GHz resolution flexgrids. For NBP = 1% using a 50 GHz grid, congestion aware routing doubles the network capacity compared with the shortest path routing. When congestion aware routing is combined with a 6.25 GHz resolution flexgrid, a fivefold increase in network capacity is afforded. © 2014 IEEE