Architecture on Demand Design for High-Capacity Optical SDM/TDM/FDM Switching

Reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs) are key elements in operators' backbone networks. The breakthrough node concept of architecture on demand (AoD) permits us to design optical nodes with higher flexibility with respect to ROADMs. In this work, we present a five-step algorithm for designing AoD instances according to some given traffic requests, which are able to support subwavelength time switching up to wavelength/superchannel/fiber switching. We evaluate AoD performancein terms of power consumption and number of backplane optical cross-connections. Furthermore, we discuss trade-offs involved in the migration from a fixed to a flexible grid with regard to the optical node size, capacity, and power consumption. We compare several ROADM architectures proposed in the literature with AoD in terms of power consumption and cost. We also study different technologies for enhancing the scalability of AoD. Results show that AoD can bring significant power savings compared to other architectures while offering a throughput of hundreds of terabits per second.