Mixed Channel Traffic Grooming for IP Over EON with SBPP-Based Cross-Layer Protection

We consider mixed channel traffic grooming in a shared backup path protected IP over elastic optical network (EON) and develop an auxiliary graph-based heuristic algorithm to share common optical channels between working and protection IP traffic flows. We compare integrated protection (i.e., cross-layer protection capacity sharing) with nonintegrated protection (i.e., overlay protection) to show how cross-layer sharing improves capacity utilization. Using simulations, network performance is evaluated in terms of the maximum number of frequency slots (FSs) used, the spare capacity redundancy, and the number of transponders required for a static traffic demand. For a dynamic traffic demand, the bandwidth blocking probability (BBP) is also obtained. It is found that the proposed mixed channel traffic grooming scheme can reduce both the BBP and the number of transponders required while improving the spectral efficiency compared to a system using dedicated channel traffic grooming. Integrated protection is also found to be more efficient than overlay protection under comparable conditions. We also observe that only a limited number of transponders per node and a limited number of FSs per transponder are sufficient to achieve good performance for an IP over EON with mixed channel traffic grooming and cross-layer spare capacity sharing.