Light Core and Intelligent Edge for a Flexible, Thin-Layered and Cost-Effective Optical Transport Network

We propose a new optics-based transport architecture that emulates fast switching in the network core via emerging ultra-fast tunable lasers at the network edge. We demonstrate that the proposed architecture is capable of handling both asynchronous and synchronous traffic, for dealing with various bandwidth granularities and fractional wavelengths, and for responding to dynamic changes in end-to-end traffic demands. In addition, the proposed architecture reduces the amount of layering in the transport network by eliminating packet and time switching.