A spectrum-efficient algorithm based on traffic splitting and merging transmission for anycast in inter-datacenter elastic optical networks

Anycast is attracting much attention due to the need of scalable and cost-effective data delivery in inter-datacenter elastic optical networks. However, spectrum fragmentation degrades network’s performance and decreases probability of successful anycast delivery significantly. When the idle spectrum block in elastic optical network is not enough to transmit the anycast request, spectrum splitting with multi-path transmitting the anycast is an effective approach to improve the spectrum fragmentation utilization. For improving spectrum utilization and reducing time delay between multiple paths, we propose a spectrum-efficient algorithm based on traffic splitting and merging (Anycast_SA_TSM) transmission to avoid spectrum fragmentation and delay between multiple paths. In order to minimize the time delay between multiple paths, we design a modified scheme to select the multiple paths with minimal time delay to transmit the anycast. During the spectrum allocation phase, a new spectrum block allocation scheme, the exact fit or fragmentation minimal, is put forward. Moreover, when an appropriate size of spectrum block is found for the split anycast request, merging split sub-requests to a single path is activated for minimizing the additional guard bands and improving the spectrum efficiency. Comparing with other two anycast algorithms, simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can get minimal time delay between split multiple paths, the minimal bandwidth blocking probability and the highest spectrum utilization.