Green Communications: Principles, Concepts and Practice

Chapter 15Green Optical Networks: Power Savings versus Network Performance

P. Monti¹, C. Cavdar¹, I. Cerutti², J. Chen¹, A. Mohammad³, L. Velasco⁴, P. Wiatr¹ and L. Wosinska¹

¹Communication Systems Department, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Kista, Sweden

²Institute of Communication, Information and Perception Technologies, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy

³Electrical Engineering Department, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

⁴Department of Computers Architecture, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain

15.1 Introduction

With an ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, connection quality, and end-to-end interactivity, computer networks require more and more sophisticated and power-hungry technologies. This is why every network segment, that is, from the access to the core, has been targeted to find possible ways to reduce the power consumption.

The term core refers to the backbone infrastructure of a network that usually interconnects large metropolitan areas, and may span across nations and/or continents. The term access, on the other hand, refers to the so-called last mile or segment of a network where central offices (COs) and remote nodes (RNs) provide connectivity between the end users and the rest of the network infrastructure. Depending on the reach of the access segment, core and access may or may not be interconnected via a metro infrastructure.

Regardless of the network segment under exam, optical communication plays a central role ...