Wavelength Continuity Constraint Research Articles

Restoration in all-optical GMPLS networks with limited wavelength conversion

A new generation of optical components and the advance of the Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) control plane supporting dynamic provisioning and restoration of optical connections (i.e., lightpaths), brings the vision of the dynamic all-optical network closer to reality. An emerging technology is the conversion between wavelengths, which removes the wavelength continuity constraint, thus allowing an easier and more flexible connection allocation. A limitation in the number of wavelength converters impairs their benefits especially during the restoration phase, when many simultaneous recovery attempts must share residual resources. This paper investigates the restoration performance of GMPLS-controlled all-optical networks with limited wavelength converter deployment. We investigate how different restoration methods, namely span restoration, segment restoration, and end-to-end restoration are affected by the availability of a limited number of wavelength converters at each node. For this purpose an enhanced wavelength assignment scheme compliant with GMPLS signaling is exploited, aiming at saving converters by assigning a higher preference to wavelengths not requiring conversion. An extensive simulation study has been conducted comparing the performance of this scheme to the most advanced scheme based on standard GMPLS signaling for the three restoration methods. Simulation results show that the enhanced wavelength assignment scheme significantly reduces the number of wavelength converters (WCs) necessary to achieve good recovery performance. The enhanced scheme especially improves span restoration performance, where the matching between the stubs' and recovery segment wavelength may require a WC. End-to-end restoration is the least affected, due to a higher degree of freedom in the route choice, while segment restoration performance lies in between.

A novel admission control mechanism in GMPLS-based IP over optical networks

With the migration of real-time and high-priority traffic in IP networks, dynamic admission control mechanisms are very important in high-capacity networks where IP and optical technologies have converged with a GMPLS-based control-plane. In this paper proposes, we propose an integrated multilayer traffic engineering framework that considers both physical and logical (optical layer) topologies for dynamically admitting new label switched paths (LSPs) in GMPLS networks. The dynamic admission control mechanism is based on an optimal resolution of an integer linear programming model that takes into account both lightpaths availability, wavelength continuity and routing constraints. In order to minimize LSPs set up delays, this mechanism first considers the logical topology (set of lightpaths) that is already in place before setting up a new lightpath for the incoming LSP, resulting in an additional set up signaling delay. When tested by simulations, results confirm that the proposed formulation effectively improves the network performance by reducing the connection blocking rate, while guaranteeing strict delay and noise constraints.

Optimal routing and wavelength assignment for survivable multifibre WDM networks

Multifibre optical networks use a bundle of fibres to realize a link between two optical nodes. Such networks can offer significant economic benefits over single-fibre networks because of their ability to relax the restrictions imposed by the wavelength continuity constraint and their potential for handling future growth. This paper introduces two new and efficient integer linear program (ILP) formulations for dynamic wavelength allocation in survivable multifibre wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) networks, using dedicated and shared protection. Single-fibre networks, both with and without wavelength conversion, can be treated as a special case of these formulations. The new formulations have been tested on several well-known WDM networks, and the results have been compared to those for single-fibre networks. A simple heuristic for dynamic lightpath allocation is also proposed, and its performance is validated by a comparison of the results to optimal solutions generated by the ILPs. Experimental results demonstrate that the new ILPs are feasible for current networks under low-to-medium traffic. For very large or highly congested networks, the heuristic can be used.

Network Dimensioning under Scheduled and Random Lightpath Demands in All-Optical WDM Networks

In WDM optical networks connection requests can be classified into three different types: Permanent Lightpath Demands (PLDs), Scheduled Lightpath Demands (SLDs), and Random Lightpath Demands (RLDs). These three types of traffic demands are considered for network planning, network engineering and traffic engineering respectively. In this paper we investigate the Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) problem in all-optical WDM networks operating under the wavelength continuity constraint by jointly considering PLDs, SLDs and RLDs. We aim to model a realistic situation where an operator wishes to employ its optical network initially designed for PLDs and/or SLDs to offer on the fly lightpath provisioning. To the best of our knowledge, our global approach has not already been investigated in the literature. According to the considered timescale, various types of optimization tools are used. Numerous numerical results are presented and discussed to outline the benefits of such a global perspective.

A tabu search heuristic for the routing and wavelength assignment problem in multigranular optical networks

This paper proposes a tabu search heuristic for solving the routing and wavelength assignment problem in multigranular optical networks, considering the wavelength-continuity constraint and a set of connections to satisfy. For a number of fibers per link, a number of wavebands per fiber, and a number of wavelengths per waveband, this algorithm attempts to minimize the total number of ports used in the network by efficiently grouping lightpaths into bands and fibers, and switching the whole bands and fibers. The algorithm has been implemented and tested on the NSFNET network, and comparisons have been made with the Balanced Path Routing and Heavy Traffic First (BPHT) algorithm in terms of number of ports. Generally, the results obtained with our tabu search heuristic are better than those provided by this algorithm.

A new approach for routing and wavelength assignment for permanent and reliable wavelength paths in wide all-optical WDM networks

This article proposes a new approach for routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) for permanent and reliable wavelength paths (WP) in wide all-optical WDM networks with wavelength continuity constraint. Given a number of available wavelengths on each optical fiber, for each simple link failure of the network, we seek to maximize the number of satisfied requests for connections. This is known as RWAP problem. In our algorithm, called RWA with Minimum Loaded Link for Permanent and Reliable wavelength paths (MLL-PR), routing is based on the search for the optimal path while trying to minimize the maximum load on the links of the network in order to minimize the maximum link capacity and then minimize the number of dropped lightpaths after any link failure. The wavelength assignment is based on a graph coloring method using tabu-search. A series of experiments using two well-known networks (ARPANET and NSFNET) have been carried out in order to evaluate the performance of our approach, in terms of the number of blocked demands, for different failure scenarios. Generally, our results are better than those provided by the current solving approaches taken as reference.

Wavelength reassignment algorithms for all-optical WDM backbone networks

In this paper, we consider the problem of enhancing the blocking performance, in the circuit-switched wide-area optical wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) networks with no wavelength conversion at the nodes. The limitation of such a no conversion network is the wavelength continuity constraint (wcc) which requires the same wavelength on all the hops of the path. Whenever there is a session request, a lightpath has to be established in the network. If the lightpath could not be established, lightpath request rejection or call blocking occurs. As each lightpath is a substantial revenue and is long-lived, lightpath request rejection is highly unfavorable in the optical backbone networks. An optimal optical network is the one with wavelength conversion capability at the nodes. In these conversion networks, blocking occurs due to capacity exhaustion on the links and not due to wcc. Hence these networks have the lowest possible blocking probability ( Pb ) achievable for any given network. Our aim is to see if one can achieve this near optimal blocking performance in no conversion networks by using our proposed wavelength reassignment algorithms. In the reassignment technique, when the new call gets blocked due to wcc, the already established calls or lightpaths are wavelength reassigned, so as to create a wavelength-continuous route in order to accommodate the new call. During wavelength reassignment, the routes for all the calls remain the same, i.e. no rerouting is done. We have proposed two heuristic reassignment algorithms namely, MOLC and Random and have studied their performance on some standard backbone optical networks. Simulation results show that in these example networks, our proposed reassignment algorithm can mostly remove the blocking due to the wcc and can achieve the wavelength conversion performance.

An experimental switching-aware GMPLS-based lightpath provisioning protocol in wavelength-routed networks

In wavelength-routed optical networks, the high-delay introduced by the optical switching fabric for resource reservation increases critically the lightpath setup delay. In order to minimize the setup delay, Generalized Multi-protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) introduced the concept of Suggested Label Object (SL), which allows to start reserving and configuring the hardware with a proposed wavelength from the source node to the destination node. This solution is not optimal in wavelength selective networks (WSN) (i.e., without wavelengths converters). The need of guaranteeing the wavelength continuity constraint for end-to-end optical connections, combined with the lack of global wavelength-based link information (the source node is not aware of which wavelengths are available on each link), makes that the likelihood of establishing a lightpath using the proposed suggested label may be minimum. In this article, we propose an enhancement to the current GMPLS RSVP-TE signaling protocol with offset time-based provisioning that minimizes the lightpath setup, improving the overall network performance in terms of blocking probability and setup delay. Experimental performance evaluation has been carried out in ADRENALINE testbed, a GMPLS-based intelligent all-optical transport network.

Analytical calculation of blocking probabilities in WDM rings with the first-fit algorithm

The estimation of blocking probabilities in optical path networks has been investigated mainly for the case in which wavelengths are chosen randomly among the available ones on a route. Even though algorithms that unbalance the load among wavelengths usually have a superior performance when compared with the random algorithm, the modeling complexity of these better-performance algorithms often limits their analytical analysis. This article proposes a per-wavelength plane blocking probability estimation for the first-fit algorithm in WDM rings with wavelength continuity constraint. Moreover, the estimation method allows the calculation of the probability distribution of the constellations of active wavelengths in the network links under the first-fit rule for a given blocking probability.

A novel backup multiplexing scheme for surviving double-link failures in mesh optical networks without wavelength conversion capability

We consider the problem of recovery from any double-link failure by exploiting shared path protection in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks. We for the first time discover the phenomenon of sharing contradiction, which results in the violation of 100% recovery guarantee. To completely eliminate the sharing contradiction, we introduce the so-called preference policy, which implies that one of two backup paths (BPs) for each connection is given priority over the other to recover the failed active path (AP). Based on this policy, we propose a backup-multiplexing scheme with 100% recovery guarantee. Further, we transform the problem of minimizing the total number of wavelength-links under the wavelength continuity constraint while recovering from any dual-link failure to integer linear programming (ILP) formulations. Additionally, we investigate three preference policies, i.e., the first backup path preference policy (FBPPP), the second backup path preference policy (SBPPP), and the optimal preference policy (OPP). The numerical results show that our proposed backup multiplexing scheme can reduce about 30% wavelength-link consumption, compared to dedicated protection. Also, the results show that the policy, which specifies that the shorter one of two backup paths is preferred, generally outperforms the policy, which specifies that the longer one of two backup paths is preferred. Furthermore, the results show that OPP has a better performance when two BPs for each connection are more comparable in their lengths.

Impairment aware optimal diverse routing for survivable optical networks

In wavelength-routed optical networks, a lightpath connection can be provisioned only if a path, or a pair of paths in case of path protection is required, can be found which satisfies multiple constraints while simultaneously achieving optimal primary cost. The primary cost can be any metric set by network administrators, and the constraints concerned in optical networks include wavelength continuity constraint, accumulation effect of some transmission impairments in the optical domain, and SRLG-disjoint requirement in survivable networks. In this paper, the impact of these constraints on the optimal path calculation algorithms is studied. Three novel algorithms for solving this problem, which we call “Impairment Aware Optimal Path Pair” problem, are proposed, and their performance is evaluated through extensive simulations.

Start wavelength selection method in optical burst switching networks under wavelength continuity constraint

Considering the state of the art of wavelength conversion technology, it is likely to dictate a more limited and sparse deployment of wavelength converters in the optical burst switching (OBS) networks. Without wavelength conversion capabilities at optical switches, the start wavelength selection method becomes an important issue to avoid burst contention. We present a new start wavelength selection method, the minimum relative group combined interference level (Min-RGCIL) algorithm, which is a modified version of a proposed method called first-fit-TE (traffic engineering). The performance study indicates that the new method achieves better performance than the original one and is robust under Poisson and self-similar traffic.

A novel optical burst switching scheme—logical cascaded private subnet with start wavelength assignment policy

Many recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that network traffic exhibits a noticeable self-similar nature, which has a considerable impact on network performance, and most studies of optical burst switching (OBS) networks are under a fundamental assumption that full wavelength conversion is available throughout the network. In practice, however, economic and technical considerations are likely to dictate a more limited and sparse deployment of wavelength converters in the optical network. Therefore, we present a novel scheme for OBS networks, called logical cascaded private subnet (LCPN) with start wavelength assignment policy. We define the concept of canoe relative to cluster in self-similar traffic, and introduce a new device named payload segregator at the edge node as a gateway to the core node in OBS Networks. According to the changes in the edge node framework, we put forward the concept of cluster private subnet and canoe private subnet in the core node correspondingly. A new start wavelength assignment policy is proposed for the absence of (full) wavelength conversion capabilities in the core node of OBS Networks. The performance study indicates that, our new scheme is robust under self-similar traffic and wavelength continuity constraint.

A new solution to the K-shortest paths problem and its application in wavelength routed optical networks

In communication networks, traffic carried over long paths suffers from a higher call blocking probability (CBP) than those carried over short paths. This is a well-known fairness problem. Such a problem becomes more serious in wavelength-routed optical networks (WRONs) due to the wavelength continuity constraint. This paper aims to enhance the fairness characteristic in WRONs by the novel classified alternate routing (CAR) approach. As a foundation of this approach, the first K-shortest paths (KSP) between a designated source/destination node pair in a given network should be obtained simultaneously. This has been studied as the KSP problem in the literature. In this paper, a new loopless deviation (LD) algorithm for solving such a loopless KSP problem will be proposed. It outperforms existing solutions in terms of running time in real-life implementations. In order to measure the fairness characteristic, we first classify all connection requests into categories such as 1-hop traffic, 2-hop traffic, etc., according to the number of minimal hop count between the corresponding source/destination node pair. We then quantify the fairness characteristic by the ratio of the average CBP of each traffic category to that of 1-hop traffic such that CBP ratios with a value closer to 1 are preferred. We will show that such a measure criterion is more precise and robust than existing ones in the literature. Finally, numerical experiments will reveal that the CAR approach outperforms existing fairness enhancement methods when considering the comprehensive performance in terms of the balance between the fairness characteristic and the overall CBP feature.

Approach to reduce optical routing instability in multidomain mesh networks

How to reduce the interdomain routing instability in multidomain optical networks is a burning issue of the day. An approach called active choke of interdomain routing (ACIR) is proposed to decrease the instability caused by temporary node overload. In this approach, when the network load increases to a certain value, the traffic requests without a minimum number of spanned domains are rejected directly or with a fixed or floating probability, while the rest are accepted. With the wavelength continuity constraint, numerical results on two network topologies demonstrate that the ACIR approach provides better blocking performance during heavy traffic and lower load at both nodes and domain controllers.

Reduced load approximation for WDM rings with wavelength continuity constraint

A reduced load approximation for WDM rings with a wavelength continuity constraint under Poissonian, homogeneous traffic with any spatial profile is presented. The model accounts for interactions among successive links in a linear network, correcting the overestimation of the blocking probability caused by the link independence assumption. Comparisons with simulation results show that the proposed reduced load approximation is a better substitute for the well-known reduced load approximation that uses the link independence assumption for blocking computation. It is shown that the proposed model provides accurate estimates of blocking probabilities in WDM rings with a wavelength continuity constraint.

An Ant-Based Approach for Dynamic RWA in Optical WDM Networks

In this paper, we propose a new ant-based algorithm for the dynamic routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem in optical WDM networks under the wavelength continuity constraint. Unlike conventional approaches, which usually require centralized global network information, our new RWA algorithm constructs the routing solution in a distributed manner by means of cooperative ants. To facilitate the ants’ foraging task, we adopt in our algorithm a probabilistic routing table structure for route selection. The new algorithm is highly adaptive in that it always keeps a suitable number of ants in the network to cooperatively explore the network states and continuously update the routing tables, so that the route for a connection request can be determined promptly by the current states of routing tables with only a small setup delay. Some new schemes for path scoring and path searching are also proposed to enhance the performance of our ant-based algorithm. Extensive simulation results upon three typical network topologies indicate that the proposed algorithm has a very good adaptability to traffic variations and it outperforms both the fixed routing algorithm and the promising fixed–alternate routing algorithm in terms of blocking probability. The ability to guarantee both a low blocking probability and a small setup delay makes the new ant-based routing algorithm very attractive for both the optical circuit switching networks and future optical burst switching networks

Design of wavelength-convertible edge nodes in wavelength-routed networks

Wavelength converters reduce the connection blocking probability in wavelength-routed networks by eliminating the wavelength continuity constraint. We develop a method for deployment of wavelength converters in wavelength-routed networks with an overlay model. In these networks, most wavelength converters are deployed on edge nodes to cover the difference in the numbers of wavelengths multiplexed on access and core links. Therefore reduction of wavelength converter cost on edge nodes leads to minimizing the wavelength converter cost in the whole network. We propose an ingress edge node architecture with fixed wavelength converters that have limited wavelength convertibility but are more economical than full wavelength converters. In our architecture, each input access link of ingress edge nodes is equipped with fixed wavelength converters, and input wavelengths from the access links are evenly distributed on the output core link. As a result, competition for a free wavelength on an output core link is avoided. Simulation results show that our edge node architecture offers about 20% cost reduction compared with a node architecture that uses only full wavelength converters where networks are actually under operation and a full wavelength converter cost to fixed wavelength converter cost ratio is 3:1.

Dynamic RWA Based on the Combination of Mobile Agents Technique and Genetic Algorithms in WDM Networks with Sparse Wavelength Conversion

Genetic Algorithms (GA) provide an attractive approach to solving the challenging problem of dynamic routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) in optical Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks, because they usually achieve a significantly low blocking probability. Available GA-based dynamic RWA algorithms were designed mainly for WDM networks with a wavelength continuity constraint, and they cannot be applied directly to WDM networks with wavelength conversion capability. Furthermore, the available GA-based dynamic RWA algorithms suffer from the problem of requiring a very time consuming process to generate the first population of routes for a request, which may results in a significantly large delay in path setup. In this paper, we study the dynamic RWA problem in WDM networks with sparse wavelength conversion and propose a novel hybrid algorithm for it based on the combination of mobile agents technique and GA. By keeping a suitable number of mobile agents in the network to cooperatively explore the network states and continuously update the routing tables, the new hybrid algorithm can promptly determine the first population of routes for a new request based on the routing table of its source node, without requiring the time consuming process associated with current GA-based dynamic RWA algorithms. To achieve a good load balance in WDM networks with sparse wavelength conversion, we adopt in our hybrid algorithm a new reproduction scheme and a new fitness function that simultaneously takes into account the path length, number of free wavelengths, and wavelength conversion capability in route selection. Our new hybrid algorithm achieves a better load balance and results in a significantly lower blocking probability than does the Fixed-Alternate routing algorithm, both for optical networks with sparse and full-range wavelength converters and for optical networks with sparse and limited-range wavelength converters. This was verified by an extensive simulation study on the ns-2 network simulator and two typical network topologies. The ability to guarantee both a low blocking probability and a small setup delay makes the new hybrid dynamic RWA algorithm very attractive for current optical circuit switching networks and also for the next generation optical burst switching networks.

A link bundled auxiliary graph model for constrained dynamic traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks

This paper addresses the two-layer dynamic traffic grooming problem in wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) mesh optical networks subject to resource constraints and the generalized wavelength continuity (GWC) constraint. The GWC constraint is a relaxed wavelength continuity constraint which incorporates various kinds of wavelength conversion capabilities that exist in optical networks. As an improvement over the existing layered auxiliary graph (layered-AG) approach which represents each wavelength separately in the auxiliary graph, we introduce a largely simplified link bundled auxiliary graph (LBAG) model and propose the SAG-LB method to find paths and assign wavelengths for new lightpaths subject to the GWC constraint. We propose the constrained integrated grooming algorithm (CIGA) based on the LBAG model. A grooming policy influences the resource utilization by determining the weight function of the auxiliary graph. We propose the least resource path first (LR) grooming policy, which is an improvement over the existing grooming policies in the literature, by integrating the wavelength and transceiver metrics together. Simulation results show that the LBAG model achieves a comparable blocking performance with the layered-AG approach while using a significantly less amount of running time. We also present the worst case time complexity analysis of the CIGA grooming algorithm and evaluate the performance of the LR grooming policy by simulation.