ULH-optimized grooming in optical mesh networks

In carrier optical networks, ultra long-haul (ULH) transmission can significantly save capital and operations costs compared with long-haul (LH) transmission. The size of the savings depends on the design of the service networks that use the underlying optical networks. In this paper, we show that proper grooming of low-rate SONET traffic into OC-192 links lowers network cost by taking full advantage of ULH transmission.