A Multi-Path Routing Method with Traffic Grooming Corresponding to Path Lengths in Elastic Optical Networks

To accommodate an increasing amount of traffic efficiently, elastic optical networks (EON) that can use optical spectrum resources flexibly have been studied. We implement multi-path routing in case we cannot allocate the spectrum with single-path routing. However, multi-path routing requires more guard bands to avoid interference between two adjacent optical paths when compared with single-path routing in EON. A multi-path routing algorithm with traffic grooming technology has been proposed. The researchers assumed that a uniform modulation level was adopted, and so they did not consider the impact of path length on the resources needed. In this paper, we propose a multi-path routing method with traffic grooming considering path lengths. Our proposed method establishes an optical multi-path considering path length, fiber utilization, and the use of traffic grooming. Simulations show we can decrease the call-blocking probability by approximately 24.8% in NSFNET. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of traffic grooming and the improvement in the utilization ratio of optical spectrum resources.