Analysis of the cost and energy efficiency of future hybrid and heterogeneous optical networks

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) promises to provide the necessary boost in the core networks' capacity along with the required flexibility in order to cope with the Internet's growing heterogeneous traffic. At the same time, wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology remains a cost-effective and reliable solution especially for long-haul transmission. Due to the higher implementation cost of optical OFDM transmission technology, it is expected that OFDM-based bandwidth variable transponders (BVT) will co-exist with conventional WDM ones. In this paper, we provide an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation that minimizes the cost and power consumption of such hybrid architecture and then a comparison is made with a pure OFDM-based elastic optical network (EON) and a mixed line rate (MLR) WDM optical network in order to evaluate their cost and energy efficiency. key words: hybrid optical network, elastic optical network, WDM, bandwidth variable transponder, ILP.