Restoration mechanisms for handling channel and link failures in optical WDM networks: tunable laser-based switch architectures and performance analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we study restoration mechanisms to handle channel and link failures in an optical wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) wavelength-routed wide-area backbone network based on a mesh topology. The solution uses a small number of tunable lasers to provide restoration capability. We consider two types of failures: link failures and individual channel ( or wavelength) failures that occur when one or more transceivers fail at a node that is the source of lightpath(s) or due to a failure in an intermediate node's optical switch fabric. We use the restoration mechanism that attempts to find alternate paths and resources after failure occurs. In our proposed mechanism, restoration is first attempted using the tunable lasers to transmit on the failed wavelengths. If all the failed lightpaths cannot be restored using the tunable lasers, unused wavelengths on the same link are used, if optical wavelength conversion is available. For the remaining lightpaths requiring restoration, two different link-level restoration mechanisms called redirection algorithm (RDA) and disjoint path algorithm (DPA) are used. Results based on discrete-event simulations to understand the performance of the proposed mechanisms, in terms of restoration efficiency and restoration times, are presented. The results show that for networks of varying size and node degree with 32 wavelengths on each link, using as few as eight tunable lasers per link provides good restoration efficiency under moderate traffic load. The performance of the proposed algorithms is compared to an earlier restoration mechanism based on broadcast, and it is seen that the proposed mechanism performs better, by offering both lower restoration times and higher restoration efficiency even with a small number of lasers. The impact of the number of tunable lasers on the performance is studied for failures occurring simultaneously on two links. It is seen that for a small number of such channel failures, as few as four tunable lasers per link are sufficient to recover from failures on a single link and on two links.