Centralized and distributed approaches to control optical point-to-multipoint systems near-real-time

Optical point-to-multipoint (P2MP) connectivity based on digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM) has been shown as a solution for the metro-access segment that is able to reduce capital and operational costs and support the capacity and high dynamicity needs of future 6G services. To achieve maximum performance, activation and deactivation of subcarriers must be done near-real-time to provide just the capacity needed to support the input traffic. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of various approaches capable of supporting the near-real-time operation requirement. Starting from the centralized approach that can be carried out on the centralized software-defined networking (SDN) controller, we also explore distributed approaches that might relieve the SDN controller from near-real-time operation. In particular, we explore the performance of deploying a multiagent system (MAS), where intelligent agents run on top of the nodes in the P2MP tree and communicate among them. Illustrative results show that the distributed approaches can achieve a performance close to that of the centralized one, while reducing communication needs. Results also show the importance of traffic/capacity prediction to anticipate the activation of subcarriers.