Interdomain wavelength path control for translucent wavelength switched optical networks: From rationales to experiments

A translucent wavelength switched optical network (WSON), with sparse 3R regenerators to guarantee the signal quality of an optical connection, is a promising paradigm for a metro/ core network. This is because a translucent WSON can achieve performance comparable to that of an all-electronic switching (i.e., opaque) network with far lower network cost and a great reduction in power consumption. Because of its advantages, many recent research and standardization efforts have focused on translucent WSONs. However, most of them study the intradomain case, and issues related to multidomain translucent WSONs are largely open at present. In light of this, in this article, we present two possible strategies to improve interdomain path computation and lightpath establishment in a multidomain translucent WSON. Both approaches are experimentally demonstrated and quantitatively evaluated. Our aim is to provide feasible and efficient solutions for supporting a multidomain translucent WSON, as well as to obtain valuable insight into the proposed strategies through experiments, which will be beneficial for the potential industrial deployment of translucent optical networks.