Multiple-period planning of internet protocol-over-elastic optical networks

Abstract

In view of both the growing dynamic traffic and increasing costs, in future, network operators will have to adopt a multi-period network planning technique that aims to jointly account for the upgrade of both the network, and the optical and the IP edges. In the current work, for an IP-over-Elastic Optical Network, we propose a multi-layer network planning technique that is multi-period in nature, i.e. the approach relies on efficient forecasts for a short-term increase in the volume. We formulate the problem as an integer linear programme with the aim of reducing the (i) capital expenditure (CapEx) – by minimizing the addition of any equipment every period and (ii) operational expenditure (OpEx) – by minimizing any displacement(s) of the equipment and reconfiguration(s) in successive periods. We conduct extensive simulations considering realistic networks to validate the proposed network planning technique. The obtained results demonstrate that the proposed technique is able to trade off the network equipment reconfiguration for the CapEx.