PRODIGY: A Progressive Upgrade Approach for Elastic Optical Networks

C-band enabled Elastic optical networks (EONs) have been one of the most deployed optical network solutions in the world. However, as traffic demands continue to increase, capacity exhaustion is inevitable. There are two major technologies, namely, multiband elastic optical networks (MB-EONs) and space division multiplexed elastic optical networks (SDM-EONs) that can enhance capacity. Each technology offers a tradeoff between better capacity and deployment overhead which directly affects the network performance. Considering the different characteristics of these two technologies, we present our proposed strategy, Progressive Optics Deployment and Integration for Growing Yields (PRODIGY), to gradually migrate the current C-band EONs. PRODIGY uses various proactive measures, inspired by Swiss Cheese Model, to make the network robust for handling network traffic peaks and ensure that the service level agreement is met. We present a detailed comparison of our proposed strategy with customized baseline strategies, and demonstrate the superiority of our proposed approach.