Power-consumption analysis for different IPoWDM network architectures with ZR/ZR+ and long-haul muxponders

Abstract

Operators are constantly faced with the need to increase optical-network capacity to accommodate rapid traffic growth while minimizing the cost-per-bit and power-per-bit. The drastic reduction of the power consumption of IP routers and ZR/ZR+ pluggable transponders seen in the past several years has renewed the interest in “opaque” optical-network architectures, where no optical bypassing is allowed. In this work, we aim to quantify and compare the power consumption of four “IP over wavelength division multiplexing” (IPoWDM) transport network architectures employing ZR/ZR+ modules versus long-haul muxponders, considering different grooming, regeneration, and optical bypassing capabilities. We first propose a power consumption model for different IPoWDM node architectures with ZR/ZR+ modules and long-haul muxponders. Then, to obtain the power consumption of different architectures, we propose a compact auxiliary-graph-based network-design algorithm extensible to different network architectures. Moreover, we investigate how the continuous decrease in the power consumption of ZR/ZR+ and IP routers can impact the power consumption of different architectures through a sensitivity analysis. Illustrative numerical results on networks of different sizes show that, despite drastic reductions of power consumption at the IP layer, optical bypassing is still the most power-efficient solution, reducing consumption by up to 48%.