Abstract: With more and more dynamic traffic, the complex wired data center network architecture poses tremendous challenges to network expansion, energy consumption management, operation and maintenance. High-speed wireless technology has the advantages of high bandwidth, dynamic connection, and flexible controllability. It has become potential data center networking solution, which can alleviate the long-term issue of traffic hotspot in data centers and reduce the time, energy and cost it takes to deploy and maintain optical cables. This paper first introduces the current development trend of data center network architecture, and analyzes and compares the advantages and disadvantages of millimeter wave, terahertz and free space optical as potential candidate high-speed wireless technologies. Secondly, we review the current typical wireless data center network architectures with investigations on the challenges of wireless data center network design and deployment. Finally, we point out the future perspectives of wireless data center networks.

Key words: data center network, high-speed wireless technology, millimeter wave, terahertz, free space optical