Evaluation of amount of equipment on single-layer optical path networks managing multigranularity optical paths

The authors propose novel nongrooming, optical path cross-connect (OXC), single-layer optical path (OP) networks that can route multigranularity optical paths with reduced optical switch (OSW) size. Since the multigranularity OPs are handled in one OP layer, the configuration and path administration of the OXCs become simple. The authors evaluate the network topology dependency of the network elements, i.e., the required number of OSW ports and fibers in networks consisting of 36 fixed nodes with different network topologies as well as that of a 16-OXC, 25-link NSFNET. The proposed networks require 60% fewer OSW ports, enabling efficient link resource utilization. A 60% reduction in total network cost is also confirmed.