Failure protection methods for optical meshed-ring communications networks

We study the survivability of a meshed-ring communication network that employs cross-connect switches. For WDM networks, the cross-connect switches are implemented as wavelength routers. Nodes can also provide cross-connection at the ATM VP (virtual path) level. By meshing the ring, the nodal degree of connectivity is increased as compared to a ring topology, and thus more alternative (protection) paths are available. For routing purposes, wavelength subnetworks are embedded in the topology. Nodes communicate with each other across one of the subnetworks to which both belong. We consider two types of subnetwork topologies to simplify the routing in a normal (nonfailure) situation. For each type of subnetwork, different protection methods are proposed to protect against a single link and/or nodal failure. The throughput performance of such meshed-ring networks under failure conditions is clearly superior to that achieved by (SONET) ring networks. We show that certain protection methods even result in lower values of the protection capacity as well as the protection capacity ratio (i.e., the overall capacity used under a failure divided by the total capacity) as compared to ring networks. We also present methods for constructing wavelength subnetworks to achieve single-failure protection using the minimal number of wavelengths.