Architecture on Demand: Synthesis and scalability

Abstract

The optical cross-connect (OXC) is a key element in current WDM networks. In this context, the design of OXCs is becoming very challenging since it has to fulfil requirements from legacy optical networks and be future-proof to support both legacy lower bitrates and future high-speed super-channels by means of flexible allocation of spectral resources. In this paper we review the novel concept of Architecture on Demand (AoD) to dynamically synthesise architectures suited to the switching and processing requirements of traffic. We propose a technique suited to perform architecture computation and composition and discuss the scalability of the proposed technique. Results show that it is possible to reduce the number of hardware modules used at least by half compared to other conventional architectures.