Use cases and drivers for optical grooming in 5G transport networks

The introduction of fine granularity flexible optical networking technology featuring SDN-based fast reconfigurability brings the possibility of using the optical layer as the multiplexing layer for highly variable traffic rather than the packet layer. This optical-by-passing approach brings relevant savings in packet switching and provides QoS guarantees hard to provide at the packet layer without over-provisioning. The paper discusses several use cases that illustrate the potential of Sliceable Bandwidth Variable Transponders (S-BVTs) as ultra-low latency optical grooming alternative, especially under the scope of 5G services.