Optical-computing-enabled network: An avant-garde architecture to sustain traffic growth

A new architectural paradigm for future optical transport network, namely, optical-computing-enabled networking, is presented. As a major departure from traditional optical-bypass framework, the new paradigm is grounded on the idea of permitting superposition of transitional lightpaths crossing the same intermediate node to produce a more spectrally efficient lightpath bringing about spectral savings and potentially greater energy efficiency. A case study focusing on optical aggregation is provided to highlight how advantageous the proposed architecture is in comparison with the conventional one.