Energy reduction provided by elastic optical networks considering yearly traffic fluctuations

Static network provisioning does not account for traffic over-provisioning nor for traffic fluctuations, causing energy wastage. Power-adaptive interfaces, sleep-mode capabilities as well a proposed elastic grooming procedure enable the implementation of different energy reduction strategies. Optical network reconfigurations are performed in a traffic-aware environment under the control of a GMPLS control plane. The investigated energy reduction strategies are applied on two network topologies, COST37 and DT17 networks, and results show that the energy savings of the different strategies are dependent on the network scenario. Thus, for DT17 network 37,5% and 10,6% power savings are achieved for SR and MF adaptations respectively while for COST37 network, 37,7% and 39,4% power savings are obtained. Moreover, Mixed adaptation used together with optical grooming allows for 43,6% and 46,9% power savings in DT17 and COST37 networks respectively which is close to the ideal 48,2% energy savings estimated for the case where the power follows strictly the traffic pattern.