Dynamic traffic grooming in survivable WDM networks

This paper investigates the survivable traffic grooming problem for optical mesh networks employing wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM). While the transmission rate of a wavelength channel is high, the bandwidth requirement of a typical connection request can vary from the full wavelength capacity down to subwavelength. To efficiently utilize network resources, subwavelength-granularity connections can be groomed onto direct optical transmission channels, or lightpaths. Meanwhile, the failure of a network element can cause the failure of several lightpaths, thereby leading to large data and revenue loss. Fault-management schemes such as protection are essential to survive such failures. Different low-speed connections may request different bandwidth granularities as well as different protection schemes. How to efficiently groom such low-speed connections while satisfying their protection requirements is the main focus of our investigation. The paper tackles the dynamic survivable traffic grooming problems in multifiber wavelength-routed optical networks by representing the network as a layered graph model. This graph multi layers, where each layer represents a specific wavelength. Each link in the layered graph has more than one fibers and an associated cost. We use a modified Dijkstra algorithm that has a reduced complexity due to the structure of the layered graph. Heuristic algorithms for fiber selection based on a well-designed link-cost metrics are proposed. The performance of various routing algorithms is evaluated through simulation studies.