Core and spectrum allocation to achieve graceful degradation of inter-core crosstalk with generalized hierarchical core prioritization on space-division multiplexing elastic optical networks

Space-division multiplexing elastic optical networks (SDM-EONs) with multi-core fibers (MCFs) are expected to meet the exponentially increasing demand for traffic. However, it is inevitable that inter-core crosstalk (IC-XT) will hinder efforts to increase capacity. Thus, attempts have been made to leverage SDM-EONs by solving the route, modulation format, core, and spectrum assignment problems, but the effects of IC-XT still need to be mitigated. Existing methods such as XT-Aware first fit and core prioritization methods are insufficient for addressing this issue. In this paper, we propose generalized hierarchical core prioritization for the graceful degradation of IC-XT in core and spectrum allocation. Simulation results establish that our approach mitigates adverse influences from IC-XT and has high flexibility in network environments. This study shows that the dynamic resource allocation method, despite being heuristic and computationally inexpensive, can sufficiently reduce the blocking probabilities in any SDM-EONs with hexagonal MCFs.