System and method for elastic optical networks

A network controller comprising:

• a processor for executing instructions;
• and
• a memory for storing instructions, which when executed by the processor configure the system to perform operations comprising:
• receiving an adaptation request for a virtual link within a virtual network embedded on an optical substrate network;
• generating a plurality of candidate embeddings based on a topology of the optical substrate network and a current embedding of the virtual link, each candidate embedding of the plurality of candidate embeddings satisfying the adaptation request;
• determining a total cost for each candidate embedding in the plurality of candidate embeddings, each total cost determined in accordance with a disruption cost associated with the respective candidate embedding, wherein determining the total cost for each candidate embedding comprises determining a weighted sum of the disruption cost associated with the respective candidate embedding, a transponder cost for the respective candidate embedding, and a frequency slot allocation cost for the respective candidate embedding;
• and
• selecting a candidate embedding from the plurality of candidate embeddings in accordance with the determined total cost of the selected candidate embedding.

A method of adapting a virtual link in an Elastic Optical Network (EON) comprising:

• receiving an adaptation request for a virtual link within a virtual network embedded on an optical substrate network;
• generating a plurality of candidate embeddings based on a topology of the optical substrate network and a current embedding of the virtual link, each candidate embedding of the plurality of candidate embeddings satisfying the adaptation request;
• determining a total cost for each candidate embedding in the plurality of candidate embeddings, each total cost determined in accordance with a disruption cost associated with the respective candidate embedding;
• and
• selecting a candidate embedding from the plurality of candidate embeddings in accordance with the determined total cost of the candidate embedding, wherein:
• the candidate embedding comprises at least one physical path, at least one split being mapped to the at least one physical path, each split having a transmission configuration tuple, each split having at least one contiguous frequency slot,
• a disruption cost of the candidate embedding is a sum of disruption costs associated with each split, and a disruption cost of a split being a product of a disruption cost coefficient c(ēptis) multiplied by a frequency slot decision variable yēptis, and
• the disruption cost of the candidate embedding is further determined by multiplying the sum of the disruption costs associated with each split by a product of a third cost constant and a sum of an expansion spectrum variable μē and a reduction of spectrum variable σē.