Optical Traffic Grooming-Based Data Center Networks: Node Architecture and Comparison

With data center network traffic growing significantly, power-efficient optical and hybrid optical architectures are considered as an alternate to packet switching. Typically, hybrid optical architectures use fast optical switching elements to ensure any-to-any route reachability. In this paper, an optically groomed data center network (OGDCN) framework is proposed. The proposed framework supports any-to-any route reachability without using fast optical switching elements in the network. Different components can be combined to realize an OGDCN, as described in this paper. The framework is evaluated and compared to other architectures in terms of scalability and power consumption. A particular OGDCN realization is presented and is shown to be better than other architectures in terms of power consumption. The power consumption is lower by at least 47% than the next best existing architecture proposed in the literature.