Green traffic grooming in IP-over-WDM satellite optical networks

Abstract

With the ability to provide worldwide communication coverage, satellite networks are drawing greater attention. The translucent optical payload enables the implementation of IP-over-WDM satellite optical networks (SONs), which can achieve great bandwidth capacity while providing the flexibility of IP routing. The rechargeable battery is the sole energy support for satellites in the eclipse region. Unrestrained discharge will accelerate battery aging and shorten the satellite operation period, causing extremely high expenditure costs. Satellite movement causes time-scheduled energy supply and traffic fluctuation, complicating the problem of energy consumption in IP-over-WDM SONs. This paper studies green traffic grooming (GTG) in IP-over-WDM SONs from the perspective of battery lifetime consumption (BLC). A grooming graph is designed to implement GTG with the physical impairment constraint in IP-over-WDM SONs, and battery-aware GTG (BA-GTG) and time-aware GTG (TA-GTG) are proposed by taking battery information and time information as prior knowledge. Numerical results indicate that BA-GTG and TA-GTG, especially the latter, can effectively reduce BLC. In addition, multiple link configurations are set in performance comparison to evaluate the effect of the physical impairment on battery efficiency in IP-over-WDM SONs.