A novel two-dimensional metric for fragmentation evaluation in elastic optical networks

Abstract

Elastic optical networking with multicore fiber is a promising option to meet the growing demands of the Internet traffic. The use of space division multiplexed elastic optical network (SDM-EON) technology with multi-core fibers improves these needs. However, despite the wide bandwidth in these networks, a destructive phenomenon, called fragmentation, wastes a lot of bandwidth. Fragmentation on a core/fiber leaves empty slots unused, which reduces the efficiency of elastic optical networks. Measuring the amount of fragmentation is one of the most important issues in elastic optical networks, so it is very important to have a proper metric that has an accurate estimation of the amount of fragmentation on a core/fiber. Since existing metrics could not meet the expectations due to various weaknesses, a two-dimensional metric to measure the amount of fragmentation in elastic optical networks is presented in this paper, called Golden metric. Then Golden-Routing Spectrum and Core Assignment (Golden-RSCA) algorithm is proposed based on this metric. Performance evaluation and comparison of the efficiency and complexity of this two-dimensional metric with other metrics show its efficiency compared to other metrics.