Reconfigurable Transport Networks to Accommodate Much More Traffic Demand

Transport networks are being used to exchange traffic among communication sites. Current transport networks are mostly static, because existing traffic patterns do not fluctuate wildly. However, given that demand fluctuations are likely to become significant due to the emerging diversity of network services, current static networks will have great difficulty in accommodating all future demands. In this paper, we propose a network architecture that can accommodate more demands by employing fiber cross-connects (FXCs) connected with dark fibers; FXCs, e.g., robotic patch panels and micro-electromechanical system, are optical switches that perform circuit-switching on a per-fiber basis. Because the FXCs can satisfy demand changes by reconfiguring the physical network topology, it can accommodate greater demand variations than traditional fixed networks; this is confirmed by numerical simulations. The reconfigurable network is particularly effective when the network has many nodes with significant demand fluctuations; it accommodates up to 2.5 times more demand than the fixed equivalent.