Adaptive Modulation and Wavelength Scheduling for High-Speed Data Center Links
Keywords:
adaptive modulation; wavelength scheduling; data center interconnects; optical switching; resource governance; energy efficiency; robustness; multi-tenant fairnessAbstract
High-speed data center links are increasingly constrained by the coupled dynamics of traffic variability, thermal management, optical signal integrity, and operational cost. This paper examines adaptive modulation and wavelength scheduling as complementary control mechanisms for intra-data center and metro-edge interconnects. Rather than treating physical-layer reconfiguration as a narrow transponder concern, the analysis frames it as a socio-technical scheduling problem that spans switch fabrics, network operating systems, workload placement, and energy governance. Adaptive modulation enables link capacity to track channel quality and traffic demand, but its benefits depend on coherent digital signal processing, transceiver complexity, and control-plane latency. Wavelength scheduling can reduce blocking and improve fairness across tenants, yet it introduces synchronization, contention, and wavelength fragmentation challenges. The paper evaluates architectural trade-offs among electrical switching, hybrid optical fabrics, and wavelength-switched domains, with attention to hollow-core fiber, space-division multiplexing, and standards-based interoperability. It also considers deployment pathways, robustness under failure and adversarial conditions, fairness among workloads with different urgency, and sustainability implications of overprovisioning. A central argument is that adaptive modulation and wavelength scheduling should be governed through observable service-level objectives and multi-tenant policy rather than purely local link optimization. The conclusion outlines research directions for cross-layer telemetry, explainable resource allocation, and resilient optical control planes.
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