On sorting transmission demands in Elastic Optical Networks with Spatial-Division Multiplexing

In this paper, we analyze the impact of sorting the network users when attending their demands on network performance. For this purpose, we solve Routing, Modulation Level, Spatial mode, and Spectrum Assignment (RMLSSA) problem for elastic optical networks (EONs) with spatial-division multiplexing (SDM) with static network operation. We use several different criteria to order the users to find the best ones in terms of network capacity and spectrum and spatial fragmentation on the network. Experimental results that sorting the users in a descending order obtains better results, notwithstanding the criteria chosen. In these experiments, sorting the users according to their path length (in terms of distance or number of links) achieve better results. Despite the sorting criteria, we found that good practices are to attend first the users with significant resource demands and use the highly efficient user demands to fill the gaps left by the previous ones.