SONET ring applications for survivable fiber loop networks

Synchronous optical network (SONET) self-healing rings (SHR) are studied in the loop environment. SONET SHR architectures for loop feeder networks are discussed, focusing on three possible dual central office (CO) architectures for fiber loop networks, using SONET SHRs to reduce network costs and provide network service survivability. These architectures reflect an integrated planning concept for SONET networks that eliminates the boundary between the access network and the inter-office network. It is shown that the use of SONET SHRs makes it easy to evolve to a protected dual CO access architecture. Economic and survivability studies are discussed. The economic studies show that using the ring approach yields significant advantages over the traditional diverse protection approach in terms of cost and survivability, especially for the dual CO architectures