Design and provisioning of WDM networks for traffic grooming

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) is the most viable technique for utilizing the enormous amounts of bandwidth inherently available in optical fibers. However, the bandwidth offered by a single wavelength in WDM networks is on the order of tens of Gigabits per second, while most of the applications\u27 bandwidth requirements are still subwavelength. Therefore, cost-effective design and provisioning of WDM networks require that traffic from different sessions share bandwidth of a single wavelength by employing electronic multiplexing at higher layers. This is known as traffic grooming. Optical networks supporting traffic grooming are usually designed in a way such that the cost of the higher layer equipment used to support a given traffic matrix is reduced. In this thesis, we propose a number of optimal and heuristic solutions for the design and provisioning of optical networks for traffic grooming with an objective of network cost reduction. In doing so, we address several practical issues. Specifically, we address the design and provisioning of WDM networks on unidirectional and bidirectional rings for arbitrary unicast traffic grooming, and on mesh topologies for arbitrary multipoint traffic grooming. In multipoint traffic grooming, we address both multicast and many-to-one traffic grooming problems. We provide a unified frame work for optimal and approximate network dimensioning and channel provisioning for the generic multicast traffic grooming problem, as well as some variants of the problem. For many-to-one traffic grooming we propose optimal as well as heuristic solutions. Optimal formulations which are inherently non-linear are mapped to an optimal linear formulation. In the heuristic solutions, we employ different problem specific search strategies to explore the solution space. We provide a number of experimental results to show the efficacy of our proposed techniques for the traffic grooming problem in WDM networks

Traffic grooming and wavelength conversion in optical networks

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) using wavelength routing has emerged as the dominant technology for use in wide area and metropolitan area networks. Traffic demands in networks today are characterized by dynamic, heterogeneous flows. While each wavelength has transmission capacity at gigabit per second rates, users require connections at rates that are lower than the full wavelength capacity. In this thesis, we explore network design and operation methodologies to improve the network utilization and blocking performance of wavelength routing networks which employ a layered architecture with electronic and optical switching. First we provide an introduction to first generation SONET/SDH networks and wavelength routing networks, which employ optical crossconnects. We explain the need and role of wavelength conversion in optical networks and present an algorithm to optimally place wavelength conversion devices at the network nodes so as to optimize blocking performance. Our algorithm offers significant savings in computation time when compared to the exhaustive method.;To make the network viable and cost-effective, it must be able to offer sub-wavelength services and be able to pack these services efficiently onto wavelengths. The act of multiplexing, demultiplexing and switching of sub-wavelength services onto wavelengths is defined as traffic grooming. Constrained grooming networks perform grooming only at the network edge. Sparse grooming networks perform grooming at the network edge and the core. We study and compare the effect of traffic grooming on blocking performance in such networks through simulations and analyses. We also study the issue of capacity fairness in such networks and develop a connection admission control (CAC) algorithm to improve the fairness among connections with different capacities. We finally address the issues involved in dynamic routing and wavelength assignment in survivable WDM grooming networks. We develop two schemes for grooming primary and backup traffic streams onto wavelengths: Mixed Primary-Backup Grooming Policy (MGP) and Segregated Primary-Backup Grooming Policy (SGP). MGP is useful in topologies such as ring, characterized by low connectivity and high load correlation and SGP is useful in topologies, such as mesh-torus, with good connectivity and a significant amount of traffic switching and mixing at the nodes

Minimization of the receiver cost in an all-optical ring with a limited number of wavelengths

A new all-optical node architecture, known as \emph{Packet Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer} (POADM), may lead to a considerable cost reduction for the infrastructure of the all-optical metropolitan rings if associated with proper dimensioning studies. We present a dimensioning problem which consists of minimizing the total number of receivers located in POADMs for a metropolitan all-optical ring with a fixed number of wavelengths and a given traffic matrix. We prove that this problem is NP-complete and provide a heuristic. The heuristic principle is to match and to group transmissions instead of considering them independently. We justify the transmission group matching approach by confronting the results of our algorithm with its simplified version. The results obtained allow us to recommend the heuristic in the planning of POADM configurations in all-optical rings with a limited number of wavelengths

Minimizing equipment and energy cost in mixed 10G and 100G/200G filterless horseshoe networks with hierarchical OTN boards

Emerging 5G services are changing the way operators manage and optimize their optical metro networks, and the transmission technology and network design process must be tailored to the specific conditions in this segment of the network. Ensuring cost-efficient and energy-efficient network design requires novel approaches that optimize across all network layers. Therefore, to moderate the growth of operators’ expenses, in this paper, we investigate low-cost and energy-efficient cross-layer deployment of hierarchical optical transport network (OTN) boards minimizing equipment and energy consumption cost in mixed 10G and 100G/200G filterless metro networks. We propose an integer linear programming (ILP) model and a genetic algorithm (GA) approach that decide: (i) the node structure by deploying various stacked OTN boards (performing traffic-grooming at the electrical layer) and (ii) lightpath establishment considering coherent and non-coherent transmission technologies. Simulative results on real filterless horseshoe networks with real traffic matrices show that our proposed approaches achieve up to 50% cost savings compared to real-world benchmark deployments

Traffic Grooming in Bidirectional WDM Ring Networks

We study the minimization of ADMs (Add-Drop Multiplexers) in optical WDM bidirectional rings considering symmetric shortest path routing and all-to-all unitary requests. We precisely formulate the problem in terms of graph decompositions, and state a general lower bound for all the values of the grooming factor $C$ and $N$, the size of the ring. We first study exhaustively the cases $C=1$, $C = 2$, and $C=3$, providing improved lower bounds, optimal constructions for several infinite families, as well as asymptotically optimal constructions and approximations. We then study the case $C>3$, focusing specifically on the case $C = k(k+1)/2$ for some $k \geq 1$. We give optimal decompositions for several congruence classes of $N$ using the existence of some combinatorial designs. We conclude with a comparison of the cost functions in unidirectional and bidirectional WDM rings

Grooming of Dynamic Traffic in WDM Star and Tree Networks Using Genetic Algorithm

The advances in WDM technology lead to the great interest in traffic grooming problems. As traffic often changes from time to time, the problem of grooming dynamic traffic is of great practical value. In this paper, we discuss dynamic grooming of traffic in star and tree networks. A genetic algorithm (GA) based approach is proposed to support arbitrary dynamic traffic patterns, which minimizes the number of ADM's and wavelengths. To evaluate the algorithm, tighter bounds are derived. Computer simulation results show that our algorithm is efficient in reducing both the numbers of ADM's and wavelengths in tree and star networks.Comment: 15 page