Elastic Optical Networks and Probablistic Design

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The UK optical communication network requires constant improvement to route ever increasing demands at suitable QoS and latencies. Such an improvement could be found from increasing the efficiency of bandwidth allocation and from improved modelling of networks at a large scale.This project seeks to model and design an elastic optical network, wherein WDM channels can be grouped together, providing larger bandwidth for larger demands, or split into several separate channels to reduce overhead on smaller demands, thus increasing network efficiency.Given the scale of the UK communications grid, modelling this requires novel approaches to representing this type of system to shrink the computing requirements to reasonable levels. Statistical physics is purpose built for this task and by using concepts such as entropy and temperature to represent states of network activity we seek to reduce the computational complexity of the problem. This will allow modelling beyond the network backbone and could even show emergent 'group' properties of such systems.This representation will be paired with probabilistic design methods to provide either efficient ways to reinforce the current network or an entirely new network design which could replace the current network when economically viable.This will improve the performance and reliability of the UK communications infrastructure, ensuring its ability to cope with future increases in internet usage such as the 'Internet of Things' or high bitrate video streams.