Optimal design for $$p$$ p -Cycle-protected elastic optical networks

Abstract

This paper considers the $$p$$p-Cycle network protection technique in comparison with the ring cover technique for elastic optical networks. We develop Integer Linear Programming models to minimize required protection capacity and used link spectra in the whole network. We consider two spectrum conversion capabilities, i.e., no spectrum conversion and full spectrum conversion, for the $$p$$p-Cycle protection technique. We also apply the bandwidth squeezed restoration technique to obtain the maximum restoration levels for the affected service flows subject to limited frequency-slot capacity in each fiber link. Our studies show that the $$p$$p-Cycle technique shows much lower spare capacity redundancy than the ring cover technique. In addition, it is found that though the spectrum conversion capability can help improve spectrum efficiency for the $$p$$p-Cycle technique, the improvement seems not very significant for the static traffic scenario. It is also found that as the number of candidate cycles used in the design increases, the spare capacity efficiency saturates.