Impact of Wavelength-Selective Band Switching on Path Protection in Multi-Band Optical Networks

Recently, there has been a significant effort into multi-band (MB) optical transmission and networking as a promising approach to deal with further traffic growth. In such MB operations, inter-band stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and band-dependent physical layer parameters can affect transmission quality. This complicates path provisioning and severely limits network performance, especially when path protection is considered. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a viable solution that improves the network capacity considering realistic protection scenarios. In this paper, not only client-side but also network-side protection in MB networks is investigated, where S-, C-, and L-bands are simultaneously operated. We propose adaptive path provisioning schemes tailored for path protection scenarios, in which wavelength-selective band switching is employed. In our schemes, the transmission band can be selected in a link-by-link manner, which enhances the degree of freedom of path protection provisioning and increases the traffic volume that can be accommodated. Simulation results verify that our schemes can outperform conventional schemes in realistic network scenarios, which greatly increases the feasibility of S+C+L-band network solutions.