Comparison of Single-Wavelength and Multi-Wavelength Transponders in a Physical-layer-aware Network Planning Study

TL;DR

This paper compares single-wavelength and multi-wavelength transponders in network planning, analyzing OSNR penalties and spectral constraints to evaluate their efficiency and resource requirements.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of OSNR penalties and spectral constraints for multi-wavelength transponders in realistic network scenarios, highlighting their advantages and trade-offs.

Findings

Multi-wavelength transponders require up to 70% fewer lasers.

Multi-wavelength transponders lead to a slight increase in lightpaths.

Spectral constraints impact transponder performance and network planning.

Abstract

Based on suitable system architectures and realistic specifications, transmit OSNR penalties and spectral constraints of multi-wavelength transponders are identified and analyzed in a network study. We report up to 70% less required lasers at the expense of a slight increase in number of lightpaths.