Performance of Hitless Defragmentation Scheme in Quasi 1+1 Path Protected Elastic Optical Networks

Abstract

This paper analyses the performance of the defragmentation scheme using path exchanging in 1+1 path protected elastic optical networks (EONs), which is intended to improve the traffic admissibility in the network. The path function of the 1+1 protection is exchanged with the primary to the backup state while the backup becomes the primary by the toggling operation. This allows both lightpaths to be reallocated during the defragmentation process while they work as backup. The defragmentation scheme based on path exchanging offers a hitless defragmentation of the spectrum by applying hitless path protection switching. The simulation results show that the defragmentation scheme based on path exchanging outperforms the conventional one and improves the total admissible traffic in the network. If the required time for reallocation of backup paths and the toggling operations between primary and backup paths is minimized, the performance of the defragmentation scheme is improved.