Optical Multicast Routing Under Light Splitter Constraints

During the past few years, we have observed the emergence of new applications that use multicast transmission. For a multicast routing algorithm to be applicable in optical networks, it must route data only to group members, optimize and maintain loop-free routes, and concentrate the routes on a subset of network links. For an all-optical switch to play the role of a branching router, it must be equipped with a light splitter. Light splitters are expensive equipments and therefore it will be very expensive to implement splitters on all optical switches. Optical light splitters are only implemented on some optical switches. That limited availability of light splitters raises a new problem when we want to implement multicast protocols in optical network (because usual multicast protocols make the assumption that all nodes have branching capabilities). Another issue is the knowledge of the locations of light splitters in the optical network. Nodes in the network should be able to identify the locations of light splitters scattered in the optical network so it can construct multicast trees. These problems must be resolved by implementing a multicast routing protocol that must take into consideration that not all nodes can be branching node. As a result, a new signaling process must be implemented so that light paths can be created, spanning from source to the group members

A Metropolitan Optical Network with Support for Multicasting in the Optical Domain

We present the FLAMINGO1 network architecture, an all-optical wavelength-and-timeslotted Metropolitan Optical Network based on a multiple-ring topology. A couple of important aspects of this architecture include all-optical packet switching at intermediate nodes on a ring and the ability to put IP packets directly over WDM channels. The rings of the network are interconnected with intelligent bridges, architecture of which is presented. The network also enables all-optical multicasting at intermediate nodes, the architecture of which is also presented. Power budget calculations have also been dealt with and discussed in detail

Flexibility evaluation of hybrid WDM/TDM PONs

A hybrid WDM/TDM passive optical network (PON) is a promising candidate for next-generation optical access (NGOA) solutions. Several hybrid WDM/TDM PON architectures can be designed, each with a different degree of flexibility, going from fully static, over partially flexible to fully flexible architectures. A flexible architecture can serve several advantages, like energy efficiency, network migration and network extensibility. The more flexible architectures, however, are either more expensive, experience a higher power loss or are less secure. A question that arises is if a fully flexible architecture really needed. An important assessment parameter is the number of wavelengths required at a certain network load. In this paper, we introduce and compare two different flavors of flexibility based on the multicasting and switching functionality of different architectures. By exhaustive simulation, we study the gains of different variants of flexibility with different traffic models

Scalability of a packet-switched WDM MAN with support for optical multicasting

This paper addresses the scalability (in terms of the number of nodes) of a packetswitched WDM all-optical bi-directional ring for metropolitan area networks. The nodes enable adding/dropping packets to/from all WDM channels on the ring. The nodes are optically transparent to data packets that bypass them. At a linespeed of 2.5 Gbps using directly modulated DFB lasers separated by 400 GHz, EDFAs to compensate for optical power loss and Phasars for wavelength multiplexing/demultiplexing it has been experimentally observed that a single ring can support upto 8 transparent nodes

Multicasting in WDM Single-Hop Local Lightwave Networks

In modem networks, the demand for bandwidth and high quality of service (QoS) requires the efficient utilisation of network resources such as transmitters, receivers and channel bandwidth. One method for conserving these resources is to employ efficient implementations of multicasting wherever possible. Using multicasting, a source sending a message to multiple destinations may schedule a single transmission which can then be broadcasted to multiple destinations or forwarded from one destination to another, thus conserving the source transmitter usage and channel bandwidth. This thesis investigates the behaviour of single-hop WDM optical networks when they carry multicast traffic. Each station in the network has a fixed-wavelength transceiver and is set to operate on its own unique wavelength as a control channel. Each station also has a tuneable wavelength transceiver in order to transmit or receive signals to or from all the other stations. A transmission on each channel is broadcasted by a star coupler to all nodes. Multicasting in single-hop WDM networks has been studied with different protocols. This thesis studies the multicasting performance adopting receiver collision avoidance (RCA) protocol as a multicasting protocol. This study takes into consideration the effect of the tuneable transceiver tuning time which is the time required to switch from one wavelength to another, and the propagation time required by a packet to propagate from one node to another. The strategy in RCA protocol is that nodes request transmission time by sending a control packet at the head of their queues. Upon receipt of this information all nodes run a deterministic distributed algorithm to schedule the transmission of the multicast packet. With the control information, nodes determine the earliest time at which all the members of the multicast group can receive the packet and the earliest time at which it can be transmitted. If a node belongs to the multicast group addressed in the control packet, its receiver must become idle until all nodes in the group have tuned to the appropriate wavelength to receive the packet. This problem leads to poor transmission and consequently low channel utilisation. However, throughput degradation due to receiver conflicts decreases as the multicast size increases. This is because for a given number of channels, the likelihood of a receiver being idle decreases as the number of intended recipients per transmission increases. The number of wavelengths available in a WDM network continues to be a major constraint. Thus in order to support a large number of end users, such networks must use and reuse wavelengths efficiently. This thesis also examines the number of wavelengths needed to support multicasting in single-hop optical networks

Exploiting AWG Free Spectral Range Periodicity in Distributed Multicast Architectures

Modular optical switch architectures combining wavelength routing based on arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) devices and multicasting based on star couplers hold promise for flexibly addressing the exponentially growing traffic demands in a cost- and power-efficient fashion. In a default switching scenario, an input port of the AWG is connected to an output port via a single wavelength. This can severely limit the capacity between broadcast domains, resulting in interdomain traffic switching bottlenecks. In this paper, we examine the possibility of resolving capacity bottlenecks by exploiting multiple AWG free spectral ranges (FSRs), i.e., setting up multiple parallel connections between each pair of broadcast domains. To this end, we introduce a multi-FSR scheduling algorithm for interconnecting broadcast domains by fairly distributing the wavelength resources among them. We develop a general-purpose analytical framework to study the blocking probabilities in a multistage switching scenario and compare our results with Monte Carlo simulations. Our study points to significant improvements with a moderate increase in the number of FSRs. We show that an FSR count beyond four results in diminishing returns. Furthermore, to investigate the trade-offs between the network- and physical-layer effects, we conduct a cross-layer analysis, taking into account pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and rate-adaptive forward error correction (FEC). We illustrate how the effective bit rate per port increases with an increase in the number of FSRs. %We also look at the advantages of an impairment-aware scheduling strategy in a multi-FSR switching scenario

Novel hybrid WDM/TDM PON architectures to manage flexibility in optical access networks

Different hybrid WDM/TDM PON architectures are compared in terms of flexibility, simplicity (affecting the cost), insertion loss (affecting the reach) and security. Special attention is given to the flexibility aspect in next generation optical access networks by designing different architectures with a different degree of flexibility, which are able to cope with different ranges of dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) possibilities. This paper assesses the degree of architectural flexibility needed to deal with some important flexibility advantages. It is shown that mostly a partially flexible architecture fulfils the needs. The architectures are then further evaluated from a cost and reach perspective. In this way, we provide a complete comparison considering all the key aspects of access network design. It is shown that a hybrid WDM/TDM PON with a partially flexible architecture in the first remote node can be an interesting candidate for next-generation optical access networks