Throughput Maximization Leveraging Just-Enough SNR Margin and Channel Spacing Optimization

Flexible optical network is promising to accommodate high-capacity demands in next-generation networks. To ensure uninterrupted communication, existing lightpath provisioning schemes are mainly done with the assumption of worst-case resource under-provisioning and fixed channel spacing, which preserves an excessive signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) margin. However, under a resource over-provisioning scenario, the excessive SNR margin restricts the transmission bit-rate or transmission reach, leading to physical layer resource waste and stranded transmission capacity. To tackle this challenging problem, we leverage an iterative feedback tuning algorithm to provide a just-enough SNR margin, so as to maximize the network throughput. Specifically, the algorithm is implemented in three steps. First, starting from the high SNR margin setup, we establish an integer linear programming model as well as a heuristic algorithm to maximize the network throughput by solving the problem of routing, modulation format, forward error correction, baud-rate selection, and spectrum assignment. Second, we optimize the channel spacing of the lightpaths obtained from the previous step, thereby increasing the available physical layer resources. Finally, we iteratively reduce the SNR margin of each lightpath until the network throughput cannot be increased. As far as we know, this is the first time that flexible baud-rate is incorporated for lightpath provisioning under low margin mode. Capacity is further enhanced by optimizing another degree of freedom in spectrum resource–channel spacing. Numerical simulations in the networks with flexible baud-rates confirm the throughput improvement, in which the relative throughput gain ratio can be over 20% in the example resource over-provisioning scenario.