This paper addresses the problems of core and spectrum assignment (CSA) in space-division-multiplexing (SDM) elastic optical networks (EONs) with multi-core fiber (MCF). We first present spectrum sensitivity (SS) of the crosstalk-sensitive core matrix to evaluate inter-core crosstalk (XT) in trench-assisted (TA) MCF. We then propose the XT-sensitive spectrum assignment to suppress XT. We consider both static and dynamic network planning based on the spectrum sensitivity. In the static scenario, an integer linear programming (ILP) model along with effective heuristic CSA algorithms are developed to suppress XT and improve the spectrum efficiency. In the dynamic scenario, two heuristic CSA algorithms are proposed aiming to initiate a graceful tradeoff between average crosstalk and spectrum efficiency. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed CSA algorithms compared with the existing CSA algorithm in MCF-based SDM-EONs.

The spectrum efficiency is a greatly important issue when we establish connection requests in elastic optical data center networks (EODCNs). In this article, we address the spectrum efficiency problems of the shared-path protection with spectrum-sharing-maximized approaches for the optical network survivability. Two integer linear program (ILP) models, i.e., flow-based and path-based ILP models, named FB-ILP and PB-ILP, are developed to minimize the frequency slots (FSs) occupied with the spectrum-sharing-maximized protection, and two heuristic approaches with the spectrum-sharing-maximized protection (HA-SSMP) and with the general spectrum-sharing protection (HA-GSSP) are also proposed to improve spectrum efficiency in EODCNs. For comparison, we introduce a heuristic approach with the existing shared-path protection (HA-ESPP) in EODCNs. On the one hand, simulation results show that FB-ILP can minimize the number of FSs occupied, but leads to the higher average number of hops and longer running time compared to PB-ILP, HA-SSMP, HA-GSSP, and HA-ESPP in static traffic scenario in EODCNs. On the other hand, the simulation results of our proposed HA-SSMP are very close to the solutions of FB-ILP. In dynamic traffic scenario, simulation results show that HA-SSMP significantly improves the spectrum efficiency and effectively suppresses the blocking probability, but leads to the higher average number of hops compared to HA-GSSP and HA-ESPP in EODCNs.

In this article, the network performance of equilibrium allocation of quantum key resources was investigated in quantum key distribution (QKD)-enabled optical data center networks. To effectively use quantum key resources, we propose three novel efficient load balancing routing, wavelength, and time-slot assignment (LB-RWTA) approaches, including LB-RWTA with flexible security level (LB-RWTA-FSL), LB-RWTA with specific security level (LB-RWTA-SSL), and LB-RWTA without security level (LB-RWTA-NSL). Particularly, the proposed LB-RWTA-FSL approach is uniquely featured by adaptive security level classification (ASLC) and load balancing (LB), aiming to demarcate the security level (SL) and reduce the overall network congestion. We introduce an existing routing, wavelength, and time-slot assignment (E-RWTA) approach without SL, called E-RWTA, for comparison. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our proposed approaches in terms of much higher quantum key resource efficiency and thus much higher network security performance than the state-of-the-art quantum key resource allocation approaches compared with the E-RWTA approach in QKD-enabled optical data center networks.