Translucent Provisioning in Elastic Optical Networks with Sliceable Bandwidth Variable Transponders

Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) permit a trade-off between spectrum and regeneration use. Provisioning strategies for translucent EONs can reduce spectrum requirements at the cost of additional Bandwidth Variable Transponders (BVTs) used for regeneration. In this context, Sliceable Bandwidth Variable Transponders (SBVTs) can enable transponder sharing among multiple demands, potentially reducing regeneration costs. In this paper, we analyze the impact of SBVTs on the translucent provisioning process of EONs. In particular, we demonstrate that the use of SBVTs can improve blocking probability at almost no extra cost. We discuss simulation results for dynamic traffic over an EON when using different provisioning strategies that use SBVTs with respect to BVTs. Results reflect that the translucent strategy can significantly reduce the blocking probability even without the need of extra transponder deployment.