Energy efficient passive optical data centre networks

Abstract

In recent years, traffic in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) networks has shown growth of 30% to 40% every year, where server to server communication accounts for 70% of the global IP traffic. This could potentially lead to an increase in traffic by factors of 30x and 1000x in 10 years and 20 years respectively. ICT networks are responsible for 2% of the global emissions with carbon footprint comparable to the aviation industry. Data rates have grown rapidly in the past decade from 1Gb/s server to server communications to 100 Gb/s with plans to increase to 400 Gb/s and 800 Gb/s within this decade. This increase has led to the need for more sustainable solutions in Data centres (clouds) and processing at the edge of communication networks (fog). This paper introduces novel cellular optical interconnection networks that enable energy efficient, scalable, resilient and low latency server to server communications. The proposed optical interconnection network linking servers uses new cellular passive optical network (CPON) architectures. The passive optical networking results in 80% power saving in the networking inside clouds and fog compared to state-of-the-art electronic Spine and Leaf server interconnections and also 85% reduction in latency. The reduction in carbon emissions due to the adoption of CPON technology in cloud and fog networks globally can lead to the elimination of the emissions due to homes in a country the size of Greece or Belgium.