Routing, modulation, and spectrum assignment in programmable networks based on optical white boxes

Elastic optical networks (EONs) can help overcome the flexibility challenges imposed by emerging heterogeneous and bandwidth-intensive applications. Among the different solutions for flexible optical nodes, optical white box switches implemented by architecture on demand (AoD) have the capability to dynamically adapt their architecture and module configuration to the switching and processing requirements of the network traffic. Such adaptability allows for unprecedented flexibility in balancing the number of required nodal components in the network, spectral resource usage, and length of the established paths. To investigate these trade-offs and achieve cost-efficient network operation, we formulate the routing, modulation, and spectrum assignment (RMSA) problem in AoD-based EONs and propose three RMSA strategies aimed at optimizing a particular combination of these performance indicators. The strategies rely on a newly proposed internal node configuration matrix that models the structure of optical white box nodes in the network, thus facilitating hardware-aware routing of connection demands. The proposed strategies are evaluated in terms of the number of required modules and the related cost, spectral resource usage, and average path length. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed RMSA strategies can achieve remarkable cost savings by requiring fewer switching modules than the benchmarking approaches, at a favorable trade-off with spectrum usage and path length.