Analysis and design of resilient multifiber wavelength-routed optical transport networks

Wavelength-routed optical networks (WRONs) are attracting significant attention for future high-capacity transport applications. This paper studies resilient multifiber WRONs, investigating the influence on the network performance of the maximum number of wavelengths per fiber W restoration strategies, node functionality, and physical topology. Fiber requirements are analyzed for numerous network topologies both without and with link failure restoration, considering different optical cross-connect (OXC) configurations and terminal functionalities. An integer linear program (ILP) formulation is presented for the exact solution of the routing and wavelength allocation (RWA) problem, with minimal total number of fibers, F/sub T/(W). Lower bounds on F/sub T/(W) are discussed, and heuristic algorithms proposed. Three restoration strategies are considered and compared in terms of capacity requirement. Different network topologies are analyzed, to evaluate the influence of physical connectivity and network size on the restoration capacity. Network evolution in terms of growth in traffic demand is investigated to study the importance of wavelength conversion within the OXC's as a function of network size and connectivity, traffic demand, and wavelength multiplicity W.