Spectral and Power-Efficiency Trade-off in Fixed-Grid Optical Networks

Abstract

The improvement of spectral efficiency in the MLR networks can be obtained by the reduction of sub-band spacing, or by minimizing the spacing of the sub-bands that operate at varied data rates. However, due to the presence of physical layer impairments, minimization in sub-band spacing leads to adverse effects on the channel(s) transmission reach. As a result there occurs an increase in the consumed power due to the requirement of increase in regeneration of the signal. In the current work we propose an improved DWDM grating in view of obtaining higher spectral efficiency. For a system, with and without Forward Error Correction capabilities (i) for various SLR solutions, we find and compare power consumption values of the components with respect to the total traffic, and (ii) for different MLR and SLR solutions, for a fixed QoT, we evaluate the minimum values of the sub-band and the channel spacing, and also evaluate and compare the power-efficiency with the distance of transmission.