1
Cognitive Power Management for Optical
Superchannel Systems
Valery N. Rozental and Darli A. A. Mello
Abstract—We presented a scheme for cognitive power man-
agement (CPM) in software-defined, superchannel optical
transponders. The scheme reduces the length of electronic
chromatic dispersion compensation filters according to the
network traffic fluctuations. Transmission rate reduction is
achieved by symbol retransmission, while maintaining inter-
nal parameters of the electronic devices unchanged, to avoid
increased complexity. We investigate single and multiple
carrier transmission schemes in terms of Pareto-efficiency
regarding transmission rate, reach and power consumption.
We show that, for the same transmission rate, polarization
multiplexed and higher modulation order schemes are more
power efficient. We further investigate the optimal number
of active subcarriers in a CPM-capable superchannel-based
optical line interface, showing that Pareto-efficient schemes
keep active over half the subcarriers. We also assess the
optimization of the number of subcarriers in a superchannel
transponder when each new subcarrier results in some addi-
tional complexity – even when non-active. We show that the
influence of the additional complexity increases with OSNR
and propose to set the number of subcarriers after OSNR
estimation is performed for the specific link. We further
propose to implement subcarrier sleep-mode by transmitting
at a minimum rate using QPSK at 3.5 Gbaud, so that – while
maintaining a significant complexity reduction – there is
no discontinuity in clock, state of polarization and phase
tracking, and the subcarrier can be smoothly reactivated.
Finally, we conduct a case study to demonstrate power
savings offered by CPM in a typical terabit transmission
scenario.
Index Terms—Optical transponders; bandwidth virtualiza-
tion; cognitive power management; chromatic dispersion
compensation; Pareto-efficient transmission.
I. I NTRODUCTION
N owadays, optical communication systems undergo a
major transmission capacity upgrade, achieving data
rates beyond 100 Gb/s per wavelength due to the employ-
ment of new technologies, namely, optical coherent detection,
advanced modulation formats and polarization multiplexing.
Along with capacity, network efficiency is gaining attention,
addressing system cost, transparent reach, quality of service,
power consumption, failure tolerance, optimized bandwidth
allocation and efficient routing. This multi-faceted task in-
volves further developments in the optical layer technologies,
protocols and multi-level integration, management and con-
trol implementation [1]. Some solutions require a paradigm
shift: for example, ITU-T recommendation G.694.1 from
February 2012 [2] introduces a high granularity, 12.5 GHz
DWDM grid, and a multi-slot flexible grid, abandoning the
traditional 50/100 GHz channel spacing. Efficient bandwidth
use is achieved through capacity virtualization, where the
service layer is decoupled from the optical transmission
layer. Here, instead of attributing a specific rate and wave-
length for each service while dealing with the variety of
associated protocols, the WDM line interface processes exclu-
sively the aggregate traffic, allowing to add client interfaces
only at the network end-points, regardless of service type [3].
A challenge is to map the aggregate traffic for the line-side
transmission in the most efficient way given the available
bandwidth resources. Here, a key component is a software-
defined optical transponder that supports variable trans-
mission rates and transmission parameter adjustment (e.g.
symbol rate, modulation format, DSP algorithms) according
to the optical channel conditions: optical signal-to-noise ratio
(OSNR), available optical bandwidth, chromatic and polar-
ization mode dispersions. Aside from the obvious efficiency-
related benefits, single transponder type-based networks
reduce costs associated with certification, testing, training
and spare part inventory [4].
Commercial product development for 100G optical sys-
tems raised an important issue of power consumption in
optical transponders, leading to such solutions as single
chip ADC/DSP, use of advanced CMOS processes and optical
integration. Higher per channel transmission rates like 400
Gbps and 1 Tbps will rely, at least in the near future, on op-
tical parallelism that allows to overcome electronic devices’
bandwidth limitations. This parallelism further stresses the
importance of power consumption optimization, because sys-
tem complexity is multiplied in optical superchannels [5].
Therefore, we view power efficiency of different transponder
architectures as a figure of merit.
Consider a software-defined, superchannel-based optical
transponder that supports different transmission rates and
modulation formats, where operator can also define a num-
ber of active subcarriers. Various combinations of these pa-
rameters form a set of the supported transmission schemes.
The suitable scheme is chosen during link configuration
according to the required transmission rate and the optical
signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), to guarantee a certain bit-
error rate (BER). If for specific channel conditions more than
one scheme attend the required rate and BER criteria, the
choice should be based, according to our figure of merit, on
minimizing the power consumption.
Once the transmission scheme is chosen, the transpon-
der transmits at a constant nominal rate, to accommodate
the highest traffic load. However, internet traffic presents
considerable fluctuations: Figs. 1(a-b), illustrates daily and
weekly profiles of the aggregate internet traffic for all ex-
change points between autonomous systems networks in
Brazil [6]. There exists a substantial fluctuation between the
daytime and the nighttime traffics. Weekly traffic also ex-
hibits fluctuations, having a reduction of almost 40% during
weekends. Although actual values may vary from one link to
another, the general pattern of these graphs should remain
similar. These fluctuations, if properly explored, may result
in system optimization. Thus, by lowering transmission rates
and choosing dynamically the transmission scheme we can
reduce the length of the digital filters used for CD compensa-
tion [7], reducing computational complexity and power con-
sumption. For that purpose, the transponder must possess
cognitive properties in the sense that it should be capable

Traffic rate [Gbps]
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0 as a sleep-mode for non-active subcarriers, so that – while
08 12 16 20 00
Hour
(a) Daily traffic pattern.
Traffic rate [Gbps]
70
60 Weekend
50
40
30
20
10
0
20 21 22
Date
(b) Weekly traffic pattern.
Fig. 1: Fluctuation of the aggregate internet traffic between
autonomous systems networks.
to identify these fluctuations and adjust its transmission
scheme for power efficiency.
Despite the benefits of cognition attribution, toggling inter-
nal parameters of the electronic devices (such as the internal
clock rates) working on the edge of their bandwidth capacity
appears extremely complex and inserts transition-associated
distortions. Besides, changes in transmission rates require
repeated system synchronization that, in addition to the
implementation complexity, results in data loss. Even so, it is
possible to attribute some adaptivity to optical transponders
while maintaining their operational parameters unchanged
– to avoid the aforementioned complexity – yet obtaining
a noteworthy power efficiency improvement. To accomplish
that, we have proposed the Cognitive Power Management
(CPM) scheme [8], for transmission rate adjustment ac-
cording to network traffic fluctuations. CPM is a technique
that allows reducing system power consumption associated
with chromatic dispersion (CD) compensation. In CPM we
achieve transmission rate reduction by retransmitting digi-
tal symbols, while maintaining internal parameters of the
electronic devices unchanged. In this way, we avoid the
increased complexity associated with changing the electronic
devices’ operational parameters, as well as the need for
repeated synchronization. In [8] we have described CPM for
100G systems based on polarization multiplexed (PM) QPSK
optical transmission. Here, we propose a CPM framework for
multiple carrier superchannel transmission, extending the
previous work.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. We begin
(Section II) by establishing basic assumptions that constitute
the framework for the subsequent analysis. Next, in Section
III, we present the operating principle of cognitive power
management scheme in a superchannel systems. We then in-
vestigate power consumption related aspects of the transmis-
sion schemes: in Section IV we assess the complexity of CD
2
compensation in single and multiple carrier CPM-capable
superchannel-based transponders; and in Section V we eval-
uate the power efficiency of the CPM-supported transmission
schemes in single and multiple carrier cases, introducing
Pareto-efficiency analysis. We also address optimization of
the traffic load distribution between the transponder subcar-
riers. We propose to employ the minimal rate transmission
04 08 substantially reducing the consumption – there is no discon-
tinuity in clock, state of polarization and phase tracking, and
the subcarrier can be smoothly reactivated. In Section VI
we apply the complexity and optimization analyses to show
by example that in a typical multiple carrier transmission
scenario CPM provides a significant reduction in power
consumption. Finally, in Section VII, we conclude the paper.
II. B ASIC A SSUMPTIONS
For our analysis we make the following assumptions:
• Fixed forward error correction (FEC) overhead size:
several recent works, e.g., [9], [10], have explored cod-
23 24 ing optimization and variable coding rate. Analysis of
variable coding rates exceeds the scope of our work. In
particular, we consider a 10−3 pre-FEC BER, required
for the 10−15 pos-FEC BER using a 7% overhead.
• Maximum symbol rate, Rs
max
, of 28 Gbaud: this rate is
widely explored in long-haul transmission because of the
100 Gbps PM-QPSK systems. It allows to produce two
samples per symbol by commercially available analog to
digital converters. We assume that much of the 100G in-
frastructure will be also used in superchannel systems.
However, the analysis can be easily extended to other
rates.
max
• Discrete symbol rates of the form Rs /2l , l = 0, 1, 2, 3,
resulting in rates of 3.5, 7, 14 and 28 Gbaud. As shown
in Section III, these rates can be seamlessly imple-
mented in the Cognitive Power Management scheme by
symbol repetition. This item distinguishes the subse-
quent efficiency analysis for CPM-capable transponders
from generic software-defined superchannel transpon-
ders, where transmission rates are not constrained by
the above relation. In principle, symbol rates may be fur-
ther reduced by choosing l > 3 (to 1.75, 0.875... Gbauds),
however, these rates lead to overly fine granularity, not
yielding much advantage. Also, these rates may intro-
duce significant phase noise-associated penalties. This
is because the variance of the phase noise (modeled as
a Wiener process) increases linearly with the sampling
time [11].
• Reach and the accumulated CD decorrelation: we as-
sume a general case where the optical route is not
known a priori and may contain legacy CD compensa-
tion modules along some of the sections of the lightpath.
In this scenario, the accumulated CD ceases to be a
function of the length of the optical link.
We also limit the digital modulation formats to BPSK, QPSK,
8QAM and 16QAM. Higher order modulation formats have
a prohibitive OSNR penalty that makes their employment
in this type of systems infeasible.
III. C OGNITIVE P OWER M ANAGEMENT
A. System Description
We consider a (multi) terabit long-haul optical link with IP
routers connected to optical line interface by 1, 10, 40 and

CPM- 1G/10G/40G/100G
Capable
IP GRouter CPM-
Capable
...
Superchannel
Line
CPM- 1G/10G/40G/100G Interface transmission rates
Capable
IP GRouter
Fig. 2: Optical link of a CPM-capable terabit system.
100 Gb/s Ethernet interfaces, as depicted in Fig. 2. The CPM
line interface is able to multiplex the incoming information
into a payload of up to the maximum transmission rate and
map into an optical channel for transmission. It is based on
a superchannel optical transponder with N subcarriers. All
subcarriers support QPSK, 8QAM and 16QAM1 polarization-
multiplexed transmission at 28 Gbaud. Also, subcarriers
may be activated separately, so that the number of active
subcarriers takes on values between 1 and N.
B. Operating Principle
CPM is based on the repetition of the transmitted symbols,
when a sufficiently low traffic flow is detected. The number of
repetitions per symbol, NR = 2k , k = 0, 1, 2, 3, results in per
subcarrier nominal transmission rates of 200/NR , 150/NR
and 100/NR for 16QAM, 8QAM and QPSK respectively. We
consider only homogeneous transmission, where the same
scheme (modulation format and transmission rate) is used
by all active subcarriers. Combinations of the number of ac-
tive subcarriers, modulation formats and the per subcarrier
rates result in several transmission schemes, out of which
only the ones that yield either reach or power consumption
advantages (i.e., Pareto-efficient schemes; see Section V) are
supported. For example, considering maximum rate of 1 Tbps
and a 5-carrier superchannel, transmission rates supported
by the CPM interface are: 12.5, 18.7, 25, 37.5, 50, 56.2, 62.5,
75, 93.7, 100, 112.5, 125, 150, 187.5, 200, 225, 250, 300, 375,
400, 450, 500, 600, 750, 800 Gbps and 1 Tbps, based on traffic
demands. This granularity may be reduced for simplicity. At
the receiver, the sequence is downsampled according to the
required data rate, as shown in Fig. 3. The figure depicts a
transmission of two samples per symbol (black arrows), with
Ts being the symbol period. After sampling and analog-to-
digital (AD) conversion, downsampling is performed, discard-
ing the samples crossed in red, maintaining two samples for
each transmitted symbol. In this way, system parameters,
such as the transmitter modulator and the receiver AD
converters operation rates, remain unchanged.
In order to benefit from the CPM scheme, IP routers should
be able to switch the transmission rates of their Ethernet
interfaces between 1, 10, 40 and 100 Gb/s, according to traffic
conditions. A decision may be taken based on a composition
of two parameters: internal buffer congestion and histori-
cal traffic patterns. The CPM line interface, in turn, must
monitor the rate of its (client) Ethernet interfaces, compute
the optimal transmission rate and adjust the multiplexing
scheme. It also must acknowledge the receiver at each switch
of the transmission scheme, so that both line interfaces are
1 BPSK modulation is not used because it is not Pareto-efficient in
CPM (see Section V).
3
1G/10G/40G/100G CPM-
Long-Haul Capable
CPM- IP GRouter
Capable
...
Superchannel
Discrete Line
Interface 1G/10G/40G/100G CPM-
Capable
IP GRouter
Ts Baudrate
28G
Identical symbols
14G
Identical symbols
7G
Identical symbols
3.5G
Fig. 3: Repetition-based per subcarrier transmission scheme.
synchronized. Thus, a cognitive power management scheme
may be resumed in the following steps:
1) IP routers switch operational rates of their Ethernet
interfaces according to the internal buffer size and his-
torical traffic patterns, through auto-negotiation with
the line interface.
2) CPM line interface monitors the rate of its Ethernet
interfaces, computes the optimal rate and adjusts the
transmission scheme.
3) When the sum of the traffic from all connected IP
routers is such that the transmission scheme switch
at the optical transmitter is triggered, the transmitter
receiver synchronization is performed.
4) At the receiver, the downsampling pattern, the number
of active subcarriers, the modulation format and the
electronic CD compensation filter length are readjusted
according to the new transmission rate.
C. Additional Considerations
There are some additional considerations regarding CPM
implementation that are left for further study:
• Return-to-zero (RZ) clock synchronization: for RZ sys-
tems, CPM may require special care during the clock
recovery, or, perhaps, a pulse-carver frequency adjust-
ment, so that the signal sampling at the receiver is not
performed at near zero amplitude instants.
• Filter band adjustment: to maximize the signal to noise
ratio (SNR), optical receivers employ electrical filters,
whose passband is about 0.5Bs (for coherent receivers)
[12], where Bs is the effective baseband signal band-
width. Since CPM changes the signal bandwidth, some
filter adjustment is needed in order to maintain SNR at
its maximum.
 4

• Convergence due to modulation switching. Step 4 of requires three real multiplications and three real additions,
CPM (Section III-B) takes into account online modu- implemented in the following manner [18]: if z1 = a + jb
lation format adjustment. However, its employment is and z2 = c + jd are two complex numbers, then:
not trivial, because it may require repetitive equalizer
z1 × z2 = (ac − bd) + j(ad + bc) (2)
convergence for each modulation switch, which would
add to the latency associated with the CPM synchroniza- = [(a − b)d + a(c − d)] + j [(a − b)d + b(c + d)] . (3)
tion protocols, and perhaps result in data loss. Systems
Because of the identical terms, the computation in (3) re-
that set their modulation format only once, during the
quires three real multiplication and five real additions. Yet,
initialization, according to the estimated OSNR, appear
if the multiplicand, z2 , is known a priori, the sum and
less complex.
the difference of c and d may be pre-computed and stored,
• Anti-bouncing mechanism: since the traffic from the con-
sparing two real additions. This assumption is valid for FFT,
nected routers triggers the transmission scheme switch,
where the multiplicands are of the form ǫ2πkn/N , and is also
threshold values are likely to be employed. This may
valid for the multiplication by the FFT-ed filter coefficients,
lead to back and forth switching (bouncing) caused by
because of the deterministic nature of the chromatic disper-
the ripple in traffic values near the established thresh-
sion. We further assume radix-2 Cooley-Tukey algorithm,
olds. Thus, some mechanism is required to avoid this
because it can be implemented for any power of two FFT
phenomenon.
size, yielding a desired flexibility for rate-adaptive schemes.
Under these assumptions, the number of (non-trivial) real
IV. C OMPUTATIONAL C OMPLEXITY OF THE C HROMATIC multiplications, MR , for FFT of size NF can be computed as
D ISPERSION C OMPENSATION F ILTERS [18]:
A. Per Bit Computational Complexity 3
MR (NF ) = NF (−3 + log2 NF ) + 6, (4)
As was shown in [7], the length (in taps) of the chromatic 2
dispersion compensation bulk filter, NCD , can be computed provided that NF = 2k , k ∈ N. A number of real multiplica-
by the following expression: tions per filtering cycle is given, therefore, by:
 
CDacc λ2 MCY C = p [2MR + 3NF ] (5)
NCD = 2 × + 1, (1)    
2 c Tsp
2
3
= p 2 NF (−3 + log2 NF ) + 6 + 3NF , (6)
where CDacc is the accumulated CD, λ is the optical carrier 2
wavelength, Tsp is the sampling time and c is the speed where p is the number of polarizations. In (5-6) MR is mul-
of light. It was also shown that a 40% reduction in filter tiplied by 2 to account both for the FFT and the subsequent
size, computed by (1), leads to insignificant performance IFFT, and NF is multiplied by 3, as three real multiplications
penalties. Fig. 4 indicates the number of filter taps required are required for each complex one. On the other hand, the
for the CD compensation, as a function of the accumulated number of bits resulting in one filtering cycle is:
CD and the baud rate. The graphic was produced according
pL
to (1) with 40% reduction, and an oversampling factor of bCY C =
log2 M, (7)
κ
2 samples per symbol. The dashed red lines correspond
to CPM-supported symbol rates, namely, 3.5, 7, 14 and 28 where L is the number of equalized samples resulting from
Gbaud, and the dot-dashed black lines correspond to some one filtering cycle in one polarization, κ is the oversampling
fixed accumulated CD values. Note that the filter size is a factor and M is the size of the modulation alphabet. Finally,
linear function of the CD, and a quadratic function of the the number of multiplications per transmitted bit, Mb is
symbol rate, not dependent on any particular modulation computed as:
format. This feature plays an important role in the efficiency Mb = MCY C /bCY C
assessment of the distinct modulation formats.    
κ 3
Having obtained the filter size we estimate the compu- = 2 NF (−3 + log2 NF ) + 6 + 3NF .(8)
L log2 M 2
tational complexity associated with the CD compensation.
Our estimation is based on the number of real multiplication Note that Mb does not depend on the number of polariza-
operations, since they consume more power than the addition tions.
operations, regardless of the hardware implementation [13].
We focus on the frequency domain equalization, because of B. FFT Size Optimization for the CD Compensation Filter
its computational efficiency in comparison with the time
In the overlapping methods (either overlap and save or
domain equalization for a sufficient filter length [8] [14]. The
overlap and add), the number of equalized samples resulting
filtering cycle involves performing the fast Fourier transform
from one filtering cycle, L, is related to the FFT size, NF , by
(FFT) over a new-coming block of data, a term-by-term mul-
[16]:
tiplication of the resulting sequence with the one obtained by
the FFT of the filter coefficients and an inverse FFT (IFFT). L = NF − NCD + 1. (9)
Also, long input data sequence requires some overlapping
method. In [15] a 50% overlap was assumed, that is, an FFT In order to obtain the optimal FFT size, for computational
purposes we first consider a parameter N bF that is the
size, NF , of twice the filter length, which is the minimum
bF in
continuous counterpart of NF , and substitute NF by N
FFT size required for the aliasing free equalization [16].
But computational complexity can be significantly reduced (8-9). Thus, we wish to obtain
by optimizing the FFT size according to the filter length, as b opt
N = arg min (Mb ) . (10)
F
shown in [17]. We assume that each complex multiplication bF
N
 5

28 Gbaud

600

500
Filter size [taps]

400

300
14 Gbaud
200

100 7 Gbaud
3.5 Gbaud
0
6
4
2 2 2.5
1 1.5
x 10
4 0 0.5
10
Accumulated CD [ps/nm] x 10
Baudrate
Fig. 4: CD compensation filter size as a function of the accumulated dispersion and the baud rate.

Substituting (9) in (8), taking the derivative of the latest

with respect to N bF and equating it to zero results in a
transcendental equation for N b opt : 21
F
NF = 2NCD= 512
b opt − log N
2N b opt − 4
Real multiplications/bit

b opt +
log2 N F 2 F
= 3 − ln −1
(2). (11) 20
F
Nb opt − NCD + 1
F

Since 19
k−1 b opt k
2 ≤ N F ≤ 2 , k ∈ N, (12)
18
that is, Nb opt is comprised between two subsequent powers
F
of 2, the optimal FFT size, NFopt , may be found as: 17
 k opt
2 , if Mb (2k ) < Mb (2k−1 ); NF = 2048
NFopt = (13)
2k−1 otherwise. 16
Fig. 5 shows the number of multiplications per transmitted
15
bit for a 250 tap CD compensation filter for a 16QAM
3 4
polarization multiplexed signal, as a function of the FFT 10 10
size. Here, FFT size optimization results in roughly 25% FFT size
complexity reduction in comparison with the 50% overlap Fig. 5: FFT size optimization for a 250 taps CD compensation
case. For practical application, the optimum FFT size values filter, for a 16QAM polarization multiplexed signal with
can be pre-computed and stored in hardware: Fig. 6 shows κ = 2. The solid blue line represents the values of the
optimum FFT size values for different filter lengths. continuous variable N b opt , red asterisks represent possible
F
NF values and the green square indicates the optimum FFT
V. E FFICIENCY E VALUATION OF THE T RANSMISSION opt
size, NF .
S CHEMES
A. Single Carrier Case
Different combinations of the modulation formats and for a given target BER that, in turn, defines system’s reach.
symbol rates listed in Section II, result in several bits per The OSNR is related to SNR and SNR per bit, SNRb , by [19]:
second (nominal) transmission rates for a single carrier: 12.5, p Rs Rb
25, 37.5, 50, 75, 100, 150 and 200 Gbps. Each of these OSNR = SNR = SNRb (14)
2Bref 2Bref
rates (with exception of 150 and 200 Gbps) have more than
one possible form of transmission. As an example, Table I In (14), p is the number of polarizations, Rs is the symbol
resumes the resulting schemes for a 50 Gbps transmission. rate, Bref is the reference band (typically 12.5 GHz) and Rb
Here, PM stands for “Polarization multiplexed”, and SP is the transmission bit rate. The OSNR does not depend on
stands for “Single polarization”. Each of the possible trans- the number of polarizations, but only on the transmission
mission schemes has an associated required OSNR (ROSNR) bit rate [19]. For coherent detection, assuming Gray coding,
 6

12
x 10
8192 5
PM−BPSK @ 28 Gbaud
4096

Real multiplications per second

SP−QPSK @ 28 Gbaud
2048
4 PM−QPSK @ 14 Gbaud
1024
SP−16QAM @ 14 Gbaud
512
PM−16QAM @ 7 Gbaud
256 3
FFT size

128
64
32 2
16
8 1
4
2
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 0 1 2 3 4
CD compensation filter size Accumulated CD [ps/nm] 4
x 10
Fig. 6: Optimal FFT size values. Fig. 7: Computational complexity of the 50 Gbps transmis-
sion schemes.
TABLE I: Possible Formats for a 50 Gbps Transmission
Nominal Rate [Gbps] Transmission Scheme ROSNR [dB] 12
x 10
4
PM-BPSK @ 28 Gbaud 10.3
PM−BPSK @ 28 Gbaud
PM-QPSK @ 14 Gbaud 10.3
Real multiplications per second

3.5 SP−QPSK @ 28 Gbaud

50 SP-QPSK @ 28 Gbaud 10.3
PM−QPSK @ 14 Gbaud
PM-16QAM@ 7 Gbaud 14.0 3
SP−16QAM @ 14 Gbaud
SP-16QAM @ 14 Gbaud 14.0
2.5 PM−16QAM @ 7 Gbaud

2
the following relations are valid [20]:
1 p  1.5 Pareto frontier
Pb (BPSK, QPSK) = erf c SNRb (15)
2 s ! 1
11 3 SNRb
Pb (8QAM) ≈ erf c √ (16)
16 3+ 3 0.5
r !
3 6 SNRb
Pb (16QAM) ≈ erf c , (17) 10 11 12 13 14
8 15 ROSNR
where Pb is the bit error probability and erf c is a compli- Fig. 8: Pareto efficiency for 50 Gbps transmission schemes.
mentary error function. Note that SNRb required for some
target BER depends only on the constellation format. For the
target BER = 10−3 , (15-17) yield [20]: schemes nor BPSK produce any benefit, considering the
SNRb (BPSK, QPSK) = 6.8 dB (18) above-mentioned features. This can be viewed in terms of
Pareto efficiency for transmission schemes. For instance,
SNRb (8QAM) = 9.0 dB (19)
for a fixed accumulated CD value of 34,000 ps/nm that
SNRb (16QAM) = 10.5 dB. (20) corresponds to transmission over 2000 km of a standard
single mode fiber (SSMF) with dispersion coefficient D = 17
The last column of Table I summarizes the ROSNR computed
ps/nm/km we arrange the possible transmission schemes as
according to (14) for the aforementioned BER in 50 Gbps
in Fig. 8. Here, Pareto frontier is formed by PM-QPSK and
transmission.
PM-16QAM. Other schemes do not meet the Pareto efficiency
Next, for a given rate, the transmission schemes are
criterion (i.e., are not beneficial neither in reach nor in
analyzed taking into consideration two features:
power consumption) and should not be employed. Analogous
1) Computational complexity (as a measure of power con- analysis for all the considered transmission rates results in
sumption) for a given accumulated CD value; a set of Pareto efficient schemes, summarized in Table II.
2) ROSNR at a given target BER. Observe that the schemes are also “vertically” efficient, in
Fig. 7 displays the computational complexity of the trans- a sense that higher rate schemes always result in penalty,
mission schemes of Table I. Note that the relative distance either in reach or power consumption, in comparison with
between the curves remains quasi-constant throughout a lower rate schemes.
wide range of the accumulated CD values. This allows to Mapping in Fig. 9 illustrates the rule of transmission
simplify the analysis assuming some fixed accumulated CD,
without loss of generality. From the inspection of Table I 2 Single polarization scheme appears because of the assumed
and Fig. 7 it is evident that neither single polarization minimum symbol rate of 3.5 Gbaud (see Section II).
 7

TABLE II: Pareto efficient schemes for a single carrier transmission.

Nominal Rate [Gbps] Transmission Schemes ROSNR [dB] Complexity (mult/sec) [Tops] Normalized complexity [%]
PM-QPSK @ 3.5 Gbaud 4.3 0.168 4.4
12.5
SP2 -16QAM@ 3.5 Gbaud 8.0 0.084 2.2
PM-QPSK @ 7 Gbaud 7.3 0.558 15.0
25
PM-16QAM @ 3.5 Gbaud 11.0 0.168 4.4
37.5 PM-8QAM @ 7 Gbaud 11.3 0.558 15.0
PM-QPSK @ 14 Gbaud 10.3 1.535 40.0
50
PM-16QAM @ 7 Gbaud 14.0 0.558 15.0
75 PM-8QAM @ 14 Gbaud 14.3 1.535 40.0
PM-QPSK @ 28 Gbaud 13.3 3.839 100.0
100
PM-16QAM @ 14 Gbaud 17.0 1.535 40.0
150 PM-8QAM @ 28 Gbaud 17.3 3.839 100.0
200 PM-16QAM @ 28 Gbaud 20.0 3.839 100.0

Transmission analog and analog-to-digital converters. Moreover, (quasi)-

Rate (nominal) baud rate subcarrier spacing allows efficient spectrum use.
200G (16, 28) Clearly, power consumption of optical superchannels de-
Non applicable schemes pends on implementation. As of today, there are no finalized
standards, and many issues, such as the implementation
Optimal scheme
method, the number of subcarriers, the level of component
150G (8, 28)
integration etc., are subject to research [21]. For example,
Nyquist-WDM superchannels [22] require a distinct laser
Complexity decreases
assembly for each subcarrier. These assemblies typically
100G (4, 28) (16, 14) dissipate several watts in a steady state operation [23],
depending on the temperature. Coherent optical OFDM
75G (8, 14) schemes, on the other hand, use one optical source. However,
Required rate

a recirculating frequency shift loop [24], used for the “optical

50G (4, 14)
37.5G (8, 7)
25G (16, 3.5) (4, 7)
(16, 3.5)
12.5G (4, 3.5)
SP
4 6 8 10
Fig. 9: Minimum power transmission scheme selection in
software defined transponders in bandwidth virtualization
environment.
scheme selection by a CPM-capable single carrier transpon-
der. Blue asterisks that represent different transmission
schemes are being attributed a pair of numbers, (M, Rs ),
where M is the constellation size and Rs is the symbol rate
(in Gbaud). Here, due to Pareto efficiency, for the same trans-
mission rate, schemes to the right of the graph (i.e., with
higher ROSNR) have lower power consumption. Schemes
whose ROSNR is higher than the estimated OSNR (inside
the vertical shaded area) are discarded. Likewise, rate re-
quirements given by the traffic state eliminate schemes with
insufficient rate (inside the horizontal shaded area). Among
the remaining schemes (inside the unshaded area), the one
of lowest rate and higher ROSNR (right bottom corner of the
unshaded area) is the most power efficient.
B. Multiple Carrier Case
1) General Considerations: Optical superchannels [5],
will, most likely, become a new standard for terabit trans-
mission. This is because optical parallelism circumvents
band limitations of the electronic devices, namely, digital-to-
(16, 7)
comb” generation, employs EDFA (or a pair of EDFAs) that
dissipates several dozens of watts [25]; though future optical
integration may substantially lower these values. Same de-
sign tradeoffs apply to generation of local oscillators at the
12 14 16 18 20 receiver. One subtlety should be noted: at the transmitter,
ROSNR all subcarriers must remain active, even if there is no data
Estimated OSNR [dB] to transmit. This is because power bursts associated with
turning the subcarriers on and off create transients in the
fiber, degrading performance. Local oscillators, however, may
be turned on and off according to utilization, without af-
fecting neighboring channels. This adds complexity to power
consumption optimization. In duplex design, local oscillators
are generated by splitting the carrier waves. In this way,
all system’s laser sources remain active and optimization
reduces to CD compensation associated power.
2) Pareto Efficiency Assessment: Consider a superchannel
duplex transceiver with N subcarriers, where each subcar-
rier is capable of transmitting schemes of Table II. We
ignore possible OSNR differences – common to generation
by recirculating loop – between subcarriers within a super-
channel. We further ignore OSNR penalties due to subcarrier
spacing. We also assume homogeneous transmission (see
Section III-B). Due to the variable number of subcarriers,
new transmission schemes are formed. Table III resumes
possible schemes for 400 Gbps transmission for N = 10. Note
that due to CPM granularity, not all available subcarriers
can be used. Neglecting OSNR penalties due to subcarrier
spacing, the ROSNR for multicarrier scheme (third column)
is the same as for single carrier with identical modulation
format. In this case the two Pareto efficient schemes are 8
subcarriers PM-QPSK at 14 Gbaud and 8 subcarriers PM-
3 Transmission at 450 Gbps.
 8

TABLE III: Possible Formats for 400 Gbps Transmission by this influence reduces, essentializing optical parallelism to
a 10 Subcarrier Superchannel reduce the baud rate and comply with the reach require-
Active Transmission ROSNR Mult./sec. ments.
Subcarriers Scheme [dB] [Tops]
2 PM-16QAM@ 28 Gbaud 20.0 7.678
40 40
3 PM-8QAM3 @ 28 Gbaud 17.3 11.517

Number of subcarriers

Number of subcarriers
1Tbps 1Tbps
700 Gbps 700 Gbps
4 PM-QPSK @ 28 Gbaud 13.3 15.356 30 30
400 Gbps 400 Gbps
4 PM-16QAM@ 14 Gbaud 17.0 6.140
20 20
6 PM-8QAM3 @ 14 Gbaud 14.3 9.210
8 PM-QPSK @ 14 Gbaud 10.3 12.28 10 10
8 PM-16QAM@ 7 Gbaud 14.0 4.464
0 0
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
Fraction of Madd Fraction of Madd

16QAM at 7 Gbaud. Despite the previous result, the number (a) OSNR = 10 dB. (b) OSNR = 13 dB.
of active subcarriers for power-efficient transmission in CPM
40
is not necessarily the maximum available: Fig. 10 illustrates 40

Number of subcarriers
Number of subcarriers
1Tbps 1Tbps
the number of active subcarriers in Pareto-efficient schemes 700 Gbps
30
700 Gbps
30 400 Gbps
for transmission rates up to 2 Tbps, for systems with N = 400 Gbps

10, N = 20 and N = 30. With the exception of low rates, 20 20

10 10

30
0 0
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1
Fraction of Madd Fraction of Madd
25 (c) OSNR = 16 dB. (d) No OSNR restriction.
Active subcarriers

Fig. 11: Number of system’s subcarriers versus the additional

20
complexity.

15 Hence, we propose to adopt the following subcarrier opti-

10
5
N = 10
N = 20
N = 30
0 CPM.
0 0.5 1 1.5
Nominal rate [Tbps]
Fig. 10: Number of active subcarriers for different transmis-
sion rates.
the number of active subcarriers for Pareto-efficient schemes
takes on values between ⌊N/2 + 1⌋ and N.
3) Optimization of the Number of Subcarriers: Assume
that each subcarrier – even when inactive – increases the
power budget by some constant amount. To match the power
consumption of CD compensation, we analyze this power in-
crease in terms of additional complexity. Our reference, Madd
is the number of real multiplication required for the compen-
sation of 34,000 ps/nm of accumulated CD in a single carrier
PM-QPSK system transmitting at 112 Gbps: 3.839 Tops. (see
Table II). Fig. 11 shows the optimal number of subcarriers for
selected transmission rates, namely, 400 Gbps, 700 Gbps and
1 Tbps, where we varied the number of subcarriers between 5
and 45. Each subcarrier added a complexity that is a fraction
of Madd , varied in steps of 0.1. We also explored the influence
of the estimated OSNR by repeating the analysis for OSNR
= 10, 13 and 16 dB (Figs. 11a-c), comparing the results with
the case of no OSNR restriction (Fig. 11d). If OSNR is high,
even for small additional complexity per subcarrier (10-20%
of CD compensation complexity), transponders with fewer
subcarriers become more power efficient. As OSNR degrades
mization method for CPM transmitters: during the system
initialization OSNR estimation is performed at the receiver
and then some of the system subcarriers are permanently
deactivated to maximize power efficiency, in a similar way
to the described in this section. Remaining subcarriers are
activated according to the traffic fluctuations, implementing
2
C. Sleep-Mode Implementation
For satisfactory performance, some of the receiver signal
processing blocks must operate continuously, so that there is
no data loss due to convergence and synchronization times.
In particular, we refer to the clock recovery, carrier phase
and frequency estimations and tracking of the arbitrary
polarization rotation in the fiber. In the signal processing
chain, some blocks are interdependent; for example, phase
recovery requires a previous CD compensation and polar-
ization demultiplexing. Therefore, if completely deactivated,
the subcarriers must be resynchronized upon reactivation.
To tackle this problem in CPM transponders, we propose to
use the minimum power transmission schemes as the sleep-
mode for inactive subcarrier instead of a full deactivation.
For example, we can use QPSK at 3.5 Gbaud, whose com-
putational complexity for accumulated CD of 34,000 ps/nm
is 0.17 Tops per second. While not optimal, still, it offers
about 96% complexity reduction due to CD compensation in
comparison with the 28 Gbaud QPSK, whose complexity is
3.84 Tops per second. In this way, there is no discontinuity
in clock, state of polarization and phase tracking, and the
subcarrier can be seamlessly reactivated. The sleep-mode
associated additional complexity can be treated as Madd in
Section V-B3.
 9

VI. C ASE S TUDY

To exemplify the power efficiency improvement by CPM 1000
we consider a 2000 km uncompensated link of SSMF fiber 6SC PM−16QAM@3.5Gbaud
6SC PM−QPSK@7Gbaud
with dispersion parameter D = 17 ps/nm/km. The system
transmits at a maximum nominal rate of 1 Tbps over central 800
10SC PM−QPSK@28Gbaud
wavelength λ = 1550 nm using a 10-subcarrier super-

Traffic [Gbps]
channel. The system supports QPSK, 8QAM and 16QAM 600
modulation formats. We further consider that estimated 9SC PM−8QAM@14Gbaud
OSNR = 17 dB and that additional power requirement per 7SC PM−QPSK@28Gbaud
subcarrier is 0.2Madd (see Section V-B). Also, assume an 400
10SC PM−16QAM@7Gbaud
additional OSNR margin of 2 dB. To assess the performance 10SC PM−QPSK@14Gbaud
we scaled the daily traffic pattern of Fig. 1a so that the
200 Traffic profile
maximum rate is 1 Tbps. Fig. 12a exhibits the 24-hour
Transmission rate all formats
CPM transmission pattern of a system represented by the
Transmission rate QPSK
red solid line, where the transponders switch between the 0
modulation formats during operation. Here, the complexity 0 2 4 6 8
is reduced by 36%, from 3.98 × 106 to 2.54 × 106 Tops. The top Time [sec.] 4
x 10
lines of the text boxes denote selected transmission schemes (a) Multiple subcarriers.
for this case. A simpler case – for QPSK modulation only
– is represented by the green dash-dotted line. Note that,
although the transmission rate granularity remains almost
identical, the transmission schemes vary (compare top and 100
bottom lines of the text boxes). For the QPSK modulation
case the complexity is reduced by 28%, from 3.98 × 106 to
2.87 × 106 Tops. 80 PM−QPSK@28Gbaud
Traffic [Gbps]

To illustrate the granularity improvement in multiple-

carrier scenario, we also include a 24-hour CPM transmis-
sion pattern for the same link conditions for a single-carrier
PM-QPSK transmission, where the daily traffic pattern is
scaled to the maximum rate of 100 Gbps (Fig. 12b). Here, the
complexity was reduced by 20%, from 3.98 × 105 to 3.19 × 105
Tops. Complexity reduction in a single carrier CPM, however,
heavily depends on the peak traffic [8]. For example, if the
daily traffic pattern of Fig. 1a is not scaled, for the same
conditions, the complexity is reduced by 33% ( from 3.98×105
to 2.67 × 105 Tops).
Estimating the associated reduction in power consumption
is a complex task affected by many factors, e.g., data rate,
technology, architecture, packaging, interconnect design, etc.
For a gross estimation, however, we used the result of [8]
where we assumed the energy consumption per real mul-
tiplication for 40 nm CMOS ASIC (that includes associated
interconnect capacitance, addition and storage operations) to
be ≈ 2 pJ. Daily power consumption values for the multiple-
carrier CPM systems are summarized in Table IV.
TABLE IV: Daily Power Consumption for Non-CPM-capable,
All Modulation Formats and QPSK Only Multiple-Carrier
Systems.
System Multiplications [Tops] Consumption [kW.Hr]
Non-CPM 3.98 × 106 2.21
All Formats 2.54 × 106 1.41
QPSK 2.87 × 106 1.59
VII. C ONCLUSION
We presented a scheme for the cognitive management
of power consumption associated with CD compensation,
in software-defined, superchannel optical transponders. The
CPM is based on the intrinsic time variability of inter-
net traffic. We investigated transmission schemes in terms
60
PM−QPSK@14Gbaud
40
PM−QPSK@7Gbaud
Traffic profile
20
Transmission rate
0 2 4 6 8
Time [sec.] 4
x 10
(b) Single carrier.
Fig. 12: CPM transmission profile for daily traffic fluctua-
tions.
of Pareto-efficiency regarding transmission rate, reach and
power consumption. We showed that for the same transmis-
sion rate polarization multiplexed and higher modulation
order schemes are more power efficient, and that BPSK
modulation does not yield any advantage – neither in reach
nor in power efficiency – in CPM-capable systems. We spec-
ified the rule of transmission scheme selection by a CPM-
capable transponder, according to channel conditions. We
also investigated the optimal number of active subcarriers,
showing that Pareto-efficient schemes, for specific transmis-
sion maintain active over half the subcarriers. We further
showed the influence of additional complexity on the optimal
degree of system’s optical parallelism, showing that this
influence increases with OSNR. As a consequence of these
findings, we proposed to optimize the number of subcarriers
for each link during the system initialization, after OSNR es-
timation is performed. The transponder would permanently
deactivate some subcarriers, so that power consumption is
minimized. We also proposed to implement subcarrier sleep-
mode by minimum rate transmission, namely, QPSK at 3.5
 10

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