Design considerations for transceiver-limited elastic optical networks

The continuous increase of data traffic for present-day applications necessitates the development of Elastic Optical Networks (EONs). Significant advancements in efficient Routing and Spectrum Assignment (RSA) algorithms for EONs have been noticed in the recent past. These existing algorithms did not mention constraints on the number of transceivers per node in a network. However, for the planning of a realistic network, it is necessary to estimate the number of transceivers required at each node for the efficient operation of a network. Therefore, transceiver constraints should be taken into account while designing the RSA algorithms. In this paper, we present the impact of putting a limit to the number of transmitters and receivers available at each node of an EON. Moreover, the cost of a network heavily depends on the number of transceivers that each node in the network may offer. Hence, estimating the required number of transceivers per node in a network is vital to approximate the design cost of a network. Here, we present an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation that includes the transceiver constraints and also develop a transceiver-aware heuristic algorithm for routing and spectrum assignment in EONs. Simulation results help us provide a proper design tool to estimate the number of transceivers per node in elastic optical networks.