How Does Node Architecture Impact Reconfigurable Optical Networks?

Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers, ROADMs, have affected the modern-day optical transport networking because of the promising facilities caused by their remote reconfiguration property. In this paper, the impacts of the ROADM node architecture on cost of the reconfigurable optical core networks are studied. Different virtual demand scenarios are investigated. We consider the optical power loss of the infrastructure and the implementation price originated from the core nodes as two cost objectives. Extensive simulations are conducted for three sets of demands in order to study also the impact of the virtual network scaling on the cost of reconfigurable optical networks.