Resource allocation and scalability in dynamic wavelength-routed optical networks.

This thesis investigates the potential benefits of dynamic operation of wavelength-routed optical networks (WRONs) compared to the static approach. It is widely believed that dynamic operation of WRONs would overcome the inefficiencies of the static allocation in improving resource use. By rapidly allocating resources only when and where required, dynamic networks could potentially provide the same service that static networks but at decreased cost, very attractive to network operators. This hypothesis, however, has not been verified. It is therefore the focus of this thesis to investigate whether dynamic operation of WRONs can save significant number of wavelengths compared to the static approach whilst maintaining acceptable levels of delay and scalability. Firstly, the wavelength-routed optical-burst-switching (WR-OBS) network architecture is selected as the dynamic architecture to be studied, due to its feasibility of implementation and its improved network performance. Then, the wavelength requirements of dynamic WR-OBS are evaluated by means of novel analysis and simulation and compared to that of static networks for uniform and non-uniform traffic demand. It is shown that dynamic WR-OBS saves wavelengths with respect to the static approach only at low loads and especially for sparsely connected networks and that wavelength conversion is a key capability to significantly increase the benefits of dynamic operation. The mean delay introduced by dynamic operation of WR-OBS is then assessed. The results show that the extra delay is not significant as to violate end-to-end limits of time-sensitive applications. Finally, the limiting scalability of WR-OBS as a function of the lightpath allocation algorithm computational complexity is studied. The trade-off between the request processing time and blocking probability is investigated and a new low-blocking and scalable lightpath allocation algorithm which improves the mentioned trade-off is proposed. The presented algorithms and results can be used in the analysis and design of dynamic WRONs

Approximation algorithms for optimal routing in wavelength routed WDM network.

Finding an optimum routing scheme, so that a given logical topology for a wavelength routed WDM network handles all traffic requirements in an efficient manner, is an important problem in optical network design. One major design objective is to minimize the congestion of the network, defined as the traffic on the logical link which has the maximum traffic. This is known to be a hard problem taking an enormous amount of time even for moderate sized networks and is intractable for larger networks. The approach we have outlined is that of obtaining an approximate solution to the problem rather than an exact solution. We have developed three closely related approximate algorithms to solve this problem. These three algorithms significantly improved the running time for finding the minimum congestion. We based our approach on the approximation fraction multi-commodity algorithm by Lisa Fleischer [F99] to calculate the primal and dual solutions for the linear program to solve the multi-commodity flow problem. We have compared our algorithm with the standard linear program solution obtained using CPLEX. The experiments show that our algorithms require, on the average, only less than 10% of the time CPLEX uses for networks with 25 nodes or less. Our algorithms perform well for larger networks which CPLEX cannot handle.Dept. of Computer Science. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .L85. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-03, page: 0884. Advisers: Subir Bandyopadhyay; Arunita Jackel. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

Investigation of the tolerance of wavelength-routed optical networks to traffic load variations.

This thesis focuses on the performance of circuit-switched wavelength-routed optical network with unpredictable traffic pattern variations. This characteristic of optical networks is termed traffic forecast tolerance. First, the increasing volume and heterogeneous nature of data and voice traffic is discussed. The challenges in designing robust optical networks to handle unpredictable traffic statistics are described. Other work relating to the same research issues are discussed. A general methodology to quantify the traffic forecast tolerance of optical networks is presented. A traffic model is proposed to simulate dynamic, non-uniform loads, and used to test wavelength-routed optical networks considering numerous network topologies. The number of wavelengths required and the effect of the routing and wavelength allocation algorithm are investigated. A new method of quantifying the network tolerance is proposed, based on the calculation of the increase in the standard deviation of the blocking probabilities with increasing traffic load non-uniformity. The performance of different networks are calculated and compared. The relationship between physical features of the network topology and traffic forecast tolerance is investigated. A large number of randomly connected networks with different sizes were assessed. It is shown that the average lightpath length and the number of wavelengths required for full interconnection of the nodes in static operation both exhibit a strong correlation with the network tolerance, regardless of the degree of load non-uniformity. Finally, the impact of wavelength conversion on network tolerance is investigated. Wavelength conversion significantly increases the robustness of optical networks to unpredictable traffic variations. In particular, two sparse wavelength conversion schemes are compared and discussed: distributed wavelength conversion and localized wavelength conversion. It is found that the distributed wavelength conversion scheme outperforms localized wavelength conversion scheme, both with uniform loading and in terms of the network tolerance. The results described in this thesis can be used for the analysis and design of reliable WDM optical networks that are robust to future traffic demand variations

Logical topology design for WDM networks using tabu search.

In this thesis the problem of Logical Topology Design for WDM Networks has been considered. Optical networks form the backbone of our communication needs, so logical topology design forms a critical part of network design. The physical topology consists of nodes and fiber optic links. Lightpaths are set up on physical topology, which represent a optical connection between two end nodes. The maximum total traffic on a logical link gives us the congestion of the network. The tabu search meta-heuristic opens interesting avenue to expedite finding the optimal logical topology. For a given physical topology, and traffic pattern our objective is to optimize logical topology, using tabu search so as to minimize the network congestion.Dept. of Computer Science. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2006 .S66. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-01, page: 0365. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2006

Analysis of resource sharing in transparent networks

Transparent optical networking promises a cost-efficient solution for future core and metro networks because of the efficacy of switching high-granularity trunk traffic without opto-electronic conversion. Network availability is an important performance parameter for network operators, who are incorporating protection and restoration mechanisms in the network to achieve competitive advantages. This paper focuses on the reduction in Capital Expenditures (CapEx) expected from implementing sharing of backup resources in path-protected transparent networks. We dimension a nationwide network topology for different protection mechanisms using transparent and opaque architectures. We investigate the CapEx reductions obtained through protection sharing on a population of 1000 randomly generated biconnected planar topologies with 14 nodes. We show that the gain for transparent networks is heavily dependent on the offered load, with almost no relative gain for low load (no required parallel line systems). We also show that for opaque networks the CapEx reduction through protection sharing is independent of the traffic load and shows only a small dependency on the number of links in the network. The node CapEx reduction for high load (relative to the number of channels in a line system) is comparable to the CapEx reduction in opaque OTN systems. This is rather surprising as in OTN systems the number of transceivers and linecards and the size of the OTN switching matrix all decrease, while in transparent networks only the degree of the ROADM (number and size of WSSs in the node) decreases while the number of transponders remains the same