Cross-layer modeling and optimization of next-generation internet networks

Scaling traditional telecommunication networks so that they are able to cope with the volume of future traffic demands and the stringent European Commission (EC) regulations on emissions would entail unaffordable investments. For this very reason, the design of an innovative ultra-high bandwidth power-efficient network architecture is nowadays a bold topic within the research community. So far, the independent evolution of network layers has resulted in isolated, and hence, far-from-optimal contributions, which have eventually led to the issues today's networks are facing such as inefficient energy strategy, limited network scalability and flexibility, reduced network manageability and increased overall network and customer services costs. Consequently, there is currently large consensus among network operators and the research community that cross-layer interaction and coordination is fundamental for the proper architectural design of next-generation Internet networks. This thesis actively contributes to the this goal by addressing the modeling, optimization and performance analysis of a set of potential technologies to be deployed in future cross-layer network architectures. By applying a transversal design approach (i.e., joint consideration of several network layers), we aim for achieving the maximization of the integration of the different network layers involved in each specific problem. To this end, Part I provides a comprehensive evaluation of optical transport networks (OTNs) based on layer 2 (L2) sub-wavelength switching (SWS) technologies, also taking into consideration the impact of physical layer impairments (PLIs) (L0 phenomena). Indeed, the recent and relevant advances in optical technologies have dramatically increased the impact that PLIs have on the optical signal quality, particularly in the context of SWS networks. Then, in Part II of the thesis, we present a set of case studies where it is shown that the application of operations research (OR) methodologies in the desing/planning stage of future cross-layer Internet network architectures leads to the successful joint optimization of key network performance indicators (KPIs) such as cost (i.e., CAPEX/OPEX), resources usage and energy consumption. OR can definitely play an important role by allowing network designers/architects to obtain good near-optimal solutions to real-sized problems within practical running times

Energy efficiency with QoS control in dynamic optical networks with SDN enabled integrated control plane

© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. The paper presents energy efficient routing algorithms based on a novel integrated control plane platform. The centralized control plane structure enables the use of flexible heuristic algorithms for route selection in optical networks. Differentiated routing for various traffic types is used in our previous work. The work presented in this paper further optimizes the energy performance in the whole network by utilizing a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for route selection. The trade-off between energy optimization and QoS for high priority traffic is examined and results show an overall improvement in energy performance whilst maintaining satisfactory QoS. Energy savings are obtained on the low priority traffic whilst the QoS for the high priority traffic is not degraded

Optimization of WDM Optical Networks

Optical network, with its enormous data carrying capability, has become the obvious choice for today\u27s high speed communication networks. Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology and Traffic Grooming techniques enable us to efficiently exploit the huge bandwidth capacity of optical fibers. Wide area translucent networks use sparse placement of regenerators to overcome the physical impairments and wavelength constraints introduced by all optical (transparent) networks, and achieve a performance level close to fully switched (opaque) networks at a much lesser network cost. In this dissertation we discuss our research on several issues on the optimal design of optical networks, including optimal traffic grooming in WDM optical networks, optimal regenerator placement problem (RRP) in translucent networks, dynamic lightpath allocation and dynamic survivable lightpath allocation in translucent networks and static lightpath allocation in translucent networks. With extensive simulation experiments, we have established the effectiveness and efficiencies of our proposed algorithms

Energy-efficient design of optical transport networks

Energy efficiency is becoming a key factor in the design and operation of telecommunications networks as a way to reduce operational expenditures and the carbon footprint associated to telecom operators. This Ph.D. thesis evaluates and proposes novel energy-efficient approaches in three design areas of optical transport networks: (1) Network architectures and operation modes; (2) Resilience schemes; and (3) Optical amplifier placements. The solutions proposed in these areas are shown to significantly reduce the power consumption in realistic deployment scenarios and could be applied by telecom operators in the near and medium-term future to enhance the energy efficiency of optical transport networks

Dimensionamento de redes ópticas multicamada

Doutoramento em Engenharia ElectrónicaEste trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre o dimensionamento de redes ópticas, com vistas a obter um modelo de dimensionamento para redes de transporte sobreviventes. No estudo utilizou-se uma abordagem estatística em detrimento à determinística. Inicialmente, apresentam-se as principais tecnologias e diferentes arquitecturas utilizadas nas redes ópticas de transporte. Bem como os principais esquemas de sobrevivência e modos de transporte. São identificadas variáveis necessárias e apresenta-se um modelo dimensionamento para redes de transporte, tendo-se dado ênfase às redes com topologia em malha e considerando os modos de transporte opaco, transparente e translúcido. É feita uma análise rigorosa das características das topologias de redes de transporte reais, e desenvolve-se um gerador de topologias de redes de transporte, para testar a validade dos modelos desenvolvidos. Também é implementado um algoritmo genético para a obtenção de uma topologia optimizada para um dado tráfego. São propostas expressões para o cálculo de variáveis não determinísticas, nomeadamente, para o número médio de saltos de um pedido, coeficiente de protecção e coeficiente de restauro. Para as duas últimas, também é analisado o impacto do modelo de tráfego. Verifica-se que os resultados obtidos pelas expressões propostas são similares às obtidas por cálculo numérico, e que o modelo de tráfego não influencia significativamente os valores obtidos para os coeficientes. Finalmente, é demonstrado que o modelo proposto é útil para o dimensionamento e cálculo dos custos de capital de redes com informação incompleta.This work presents a study on the dimensioning of optical networks, aiming to obtain a dimensioning model for survivable optical transport networks. The study relies on a statistical approach rather than a deterministic approach. Initially, enabling technologies and different architectures usually employed in optical transport networks are presented. The main survivability schemes and transport modes are also presented. Useful variables are identified and a transport network dimensioning model is presented, with emphasis on mesh-based network topologies, and considering opaque, transparent and translucent transport modes. A rigorous analysis on the characteristics of real-world transport networks is done, and a topology generator is developed. The topology generator is used for testing and validating the developed models. A genetic algorithm for obtaining an optimized topology for a given traffic load is implemented as well. Expressions for calculating non-deterministic variables are proposed, namely for the average number of hops per demand, protection and restoration coefficient. For the last two, the impact of the traffic model was analyzed. It is shown that results obtained from the proposed expressions are quite similar to the ones obtained from numeric calculation. Moreover, the traffic model does not influence significantly the values obtained for the coefficients. Finally, it is shown that the proposed model is useful for the dimensioning and calculation of capital expenditures of networks in absence of complete information.FCT - SFRH/BD/27545/200

Optimization of p-cycle protection schemes in optical networks

La survie des réseaux est un domaine d'étude technique très intéressant ainsi qu'une préoccupation critique dans la conception des réseaux. Compte tenu du fait que de plus en plus de données sont transportées à travers des réseaux de communication, une simple panne peut interrompre des millions d'utilisateurs et engendrer des millions de dollars de pertes de revenu. Les techniques de protection des réseaux consistent à fournir une capacité supplémentaire dans un réseau et à réacheminer les flux automatiquement autour de la panne en utilisant cette disponibilité de capacité. Cette thèse porte sur la conception de réseaux optiques intégrant des techniques de survie qui utilisent des schémas de protection basés sur les p-cycles. Plus précisément, les p-cycles de protection par chemin sont exploités dans le contexte de pannes sur les liens. Notre étude se concentre sur la mise en place de structures de protection par p-cycles, et ce, en supposant que les chemins d'opération pour l'ensemble des requêtes sont définis a priori. La majorité des travaux existants utilisent des heuristiques ou des méthodes de résolution ayant de la difficulté à résoudre des instances de grande taille. L'objectif de cette thèse est double. D'une part, nous proposons des modèles et des méthodes de résolution capables d'aborder des problèmes de plus grande taille que ceux déjà présentés dans la littérature. D'autre part, grâce aux nouveaux algorithmes, nous sommes en mesure de produire des solutions optimales ou quasi-optimales. Pour ce faire, nous nous appuyons sur la technique de génération de colonnes, celle-ci étant adéquate pour résoudre des problèmes de programmation linéaire de grande taille. Dans ce projet, la génération de colonnes est utilisée comme une façon intelligente d'énumérer implicitement des cycles prometteurs. Nous proposons d'abord des formulations pour le problème maître et le problème auxiliaire ainsi qu'un premier algorithme de génération de colonnes pour la conception de réseaux protegées par des p-cycles de la protection par chemin. L'algorithme obtient de meilleures solutions, dans un temps raisonnable, que celles obtenues par les méthodes existantes. Par la suite, une formulation plus compacte est proposée pour le problème auxiliaire. De plus, nous présentons une nouvelle méthode de décomposition hiérarchique qui apporte une grande amélioration de l'efficacité globale de l'algorithme. En ce qui concerne les solutions en nombres entiers, nous proposons deux méthodes heurisiques qui arrivent à trouver des bonnes solutions. Nous nous attardons aussi à une comparaison systématique entre les p-cycles et les schémas classiques de protection partagée. Nous effectuons donc une comparaison précise en utilisant des formulations unifiées et basées sur la génération de colonnes pour obtenir des résultats de bonne qualité. Par la suite, nous évaluons empiriquement les versions orientée et non-orientée des p-cycles pour la protection par lien ainsi que pour la protection par chemin, dans des scénarios de trafic asymétrique. Nous montrons quel est le coût de protection additionnel engendré lorsque des systèmes bidirectionnels sont employés dans de tels scénarios. Finalement, nous étudions une formulation de génération de colonnes pour la conception de réseaux avec des p-cycles en présence d'exigences de disponibilité et nous obtenons des premières bornes inférieures pour ce problème.Network survivability is a very interesting area of technical study and a critical concern in network design. As more and more data are carried over communication networks, a single outage can disrupt millions of users and result in millions of dollars of lost revenue. Survivability techniques involve providing some redundant capacity within the network and automatically rerouting traffic around the failure using this redundant capacity. This thesis concerns the design of survivable optical networks using p-cycle based schemes, more particularly, path-protecting p-cycles, in link failure scenarios. Our study focuses on the placement of p-cycle protection structures assuming that the working routes for the set of connection requests are defined a priori. Most existing work carried out on p-cycles concerns heuristic algorithms or methods suffering from critical lack of scalability. Thus, the objective of this thesis is twofold: on the one hand, to propose scalable models and solution methods enabling to approach larger problem instances and on the other hand, to produce optimal or near optimal solutions with mathematically proven optimality gaps. For this, we rely on the column generation technique which is suitable to solve large scale linear programming problems. Here, column generation is used as an intelligent way of implicitly enumerating promising cycles to be part of p-cycle designs. At first, we propose mathematical formulations for the master and the pricing problems as well as the first column generation algorithm for the design of survivable networks based on path-protecting p-cycles. The resulting algorithm obtains better solutions within reasonable running time in comparison with existing methods. Then, a much more compact formulation of the pricing problem is obtained. In addition, we also propose a new hierarchical decomposition method which greatly improves the efficiency of the whole algorithm and allows us to solve larger problem instances. As for integer solutions, two heuristic approaches are proposed to obtain good solutions. Next, we dedicate our attention to a systematic comparison of p-cycles and classical shared protection schemes. We perform an accurate comparison by using a unified column generation framework to find provably good results. Afterwards, our study concerns an empirical evaluation of directed and undirected link- and path-protecting p-cycles under asymmetric traffic scenarios. We show how much additional protection cost results from employing bidirectional systems in such scenarios. Finally, we investigate a column generation formulation for the design of p-cycle networks under availability requirements and obtain the first lower bounds for the problem

A Study of Four Network Problems in Transportation, Telecommunications, and Supply Chain Management

The increasing material costs and the rapid advances in computing technology have both motivated and promoted the study of network problems that arise in several different application domains. This dissertation consists of four chapters on network applications in transportation, telecommunications, and supply chain management. The core of our research is to apply heuristic search procedures and combinatorial optimization techniques to various practical problems. In the second chapter we investigate the split delivery vehicle routing problem (SDVRP), where a customer's demand can be split among several vehicles. The third chapter deals with the regenerator location problem (RLP) that arises in optical networks. The fourth chapter solves the parametric uncapacitated network design problems on series-parallel graphs, which have potential application in supply chain management. In the fifth chapter we study the arc routing problem that arises in the small package delivery industry. The last chapter summarizes the dissertation. The results in this dissertation indicate that the methodologies developed to solve the network problems in the four different applications are quite efficient. Consequently, when applied in practice, they have the potential to significantly improve the operational efficiency of organizations in the relevant application domains

Joint optimization of topology, switching, routing and wavelength assignment

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-285).To provide end users with economic access to high bandwidth, the architecture of the next generation metropolitan area networks (MANs) needs to be judiciously designed from the cost perspective. In addition to a low initial capital investment, the ultimate goal is to design networks that exhibit excellent scalability - a decreasing cost-per-node-per-unit-traffic as user number and transaction size increase. As an effort to achieve this goal, in this thesis we search for the scalable network architectures over the solution space that embodies the key aspects of optical networks: fiber connection topology, switching architecture selection and resource dimensioning, routing and wavelength assignment (RWA). Due to the inter-related nature of these design elements, we intended to solve the design problem jointly in the optimization process in order to achieve over-all good performance. To evaluate how the cost drives architectural tradeoffs, an analytical approach is taken in most parts of the thesis by first focusing on networks with symmetric and well defined structures (i.e., regular networks) and symmetric traffic patterns (i.e., all-to-all uniform traffic), which are fair representations that give us suggestions of trends, etc.(cont.) We starts with a examination of various measures of regular topologies. The average minimum hop distance plays a crucial role in evaluating the efficiency of network architecture. From the perspective of designing optical networks, the amount of switching resources used at nodes is proportional to the average minimum hop distance. Thus a smaller average minimum hop distance translates into a lower fraction of pass-through traffic and less switching resources required. Next, a first-order cost model is set up and an optimization problem is formulated for the purpose of characterizing the tradeoffs between fiber and switching resources. Via convex optimization techniques, the joint optimization problem is solved analytically for (static) uniform traffic and symmetric networks. Two classes of regular graphs - Generalized Moore Graphs and A-nearest Neighbors Graphs - are identified to yield lower and upper cost bounds, respectively. The investigation of the cost scalability further demonstrates the advantage of the Generalized Moore Graphs as benchmark topologies: with linear switching cost structure, the minimal normalized cost per unit traffic decreases with increasing network size for the Generalized Moore Graphs and their relatives.(cont.) In comparison, for less efficient fiber topologies (e.g., A-nearest Neighbors) and switching cost structures (e.g., quadratic cost), the minimal normalized cost per unit traffic plateaus or even increases with increasing network size. The study also reveals other attractive properties of Generalized Moore Graphs in conjunction with minimum hop routing - the aggregate network load is evenly distributed over each fiber. Thus, Generalized Moore Graphs also require the minimum number of wavelengths to support a given uniform traffic demand. Further more, the theoretical works on the Generalized Moore Graphs and their close relatives are extended to study more realistic design scenarios in two aspects. One aspect addresses the irregular topologies and (static) non-uniform traffic, for which the results of Generalized Moore networks are used to provide useful estimates of network cost, and are thus offering good references for cost-efficient optical networks. The other aspect deals with network design under random demands. Two optimization formulations that incorporate the traffic variability are presented.(cont.) The results show that as physical architecture, Generalized Moore Graphs are most robust (in cost) to the demand uncertainties. Analytical results also provided design guidelines on how optimum dimensioning, network connectivity, and network costs vary as functions of risk aversion, service level requirements, and probability distributions of demands.by Kyle Chi Guan.Ph.D

Remote Sensing

This dual conception of remote sensing brought us to the idea of preparing two different books; in addition to the first book which displays recent advances in remote sensing applications, this book is devoted to new techniques for data processing, sensors and platforms. We do not intend this book to cover all aspects of remote sensing techniques and platforms, since it would be an impossible task for a single volume. Instead, we have collected a number of high-quality, original and representative contributions in those areas