Channel Assignment for a Metro Hub Under Nonuniform Traffic

We consider a metro wavelength-division- multiplexing (WDM) network in which a metro hub connects multiple local networks to a backbone network. In many practical scenarios, the metro WDM network has nonuniform traffic. A metro hub recently studied in the literature can effectively transport nonuniform traffic via nonuniform channel assignment. To realize this feature, it is necessary to assign wavelength channels within the hub to fulfill the given channel requirements while avoiding wavelength conflict. In this letter, we formulate this wavelength assignment problem and propose an efficient method to solve it.      

The AWG/spl par/PSC network:a performance-enhanced single-hop WDM network with heterogeneous protection

Single-hop wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) networks based on a central passive star coupler (PSC) or arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG) hub have received a great deal of attention as promising solutions for the quickly increasing traffic in metropolitan and local area networks. These single-hop networks suffer from a single point of failure: if the central hub fails, then all network connectivity is lost. To address this single point of failure in an efficient manner, we propose a novel single-hop WDM network, the AWG/spl par/PSC network. The AWG/spl par/PSC network consists of an AWG in parallel with a PSC. The AWG and PSC provide heterogeneous protection for each other; the AWG/spl par/PSC network remains functional when either the AWG or the PSC fails. If both AWG and PSC are functional, the AWG/spl par/PSC network uniquely combines the respective strengths of the two devices. By means of analysis and verifying simulations we find that the throughput of the AWG/spl par/PSC network is significantly larger than the total throughput obtained by combining the throughput of a stand-alone AWG network with the throughput of a stand-alone PSC network. We also find that the AWG/spl par/PSC network gives over a wide operating range a better throughput-delay performance than a network consisting of either two load sharing PSCs in parallel or two load sharing AWGs in parallel.     

The FT/sup /spl Lambda//-FR/sup /spl Lambda// AWG network: a practical single-hop metro WDM network for efficient uni- and multicasting

Single-hop wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) networks with a central passive star coupler (PSC), as well as single-hop networks with a central arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG) and a single transceiver at each node, have been extensively studied as solutions for the quickly increasing amounts of unicast and multicast traffic in the metropolitan area. The main bottlenecks of these networks are the lack of spatial wavelength reuse in the studied PSC-based networks and the single transceiver in the studied AWG-based metro WDM networks. This paper describes the development and evaluation of the FT/sup /spl Lambda//-FR/sup /spl Lambda// AWG network, which is based on a central AWG and has arrays of fixed-tuned transmitters and receivers at each node. Transceiver arrays are a mature technology, making the proposed network practical. In addition, the transmitter arrays allow for high-speed signaling over the AWG while the receiver arrays relieve the receiver bottleneck arising from multicasting in conjunction with spatial wavelength reuse on the AWG. The results from probabilistic analysis and simulation reported here indicate that the FT/sup /spl Lambda//-FR/sup /spl Lambda// AWG network gives particularly good throughput-delay performance for a mix of unicast and multicast traffic.     

Wavelength reuse for efficient packet-switched transport in an AWG-based metro WDM network

Metro wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) networks play an important role in the emerging Internet hierarchy; they interconnect the backbone WDM networks and the local-access networks. The current circuit-switched SONET/synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH)-over-WDM-ring metro networks are expected to become a serious bottleneck-the so-called metro gap-as they are faced with an increasing amount of bursty packet data traffic and quickly increasing bandwidths in the backbone networks and access networks. Innovative metro WDM networks that are highly efficient and able to handle variable-size packets are needed to alleviate the metro gap. In this paper, we study an arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG)-based single-hop WDM metro network. We analyze the photonic switching of variable-size packets with spatial wavelength reuse. We derive computationally efficient and accurate expressions for the network throughput and delay. Our extensive numerical investigations-based on our analytical results and simulations-reveal that spatial wavelength reuse is crucial for efficient photonic packet switching. In typical scenarios, spatial wavelength reuse increases the throughput by 60% while reducing the delay by 40%. Also, the throughput of our AWG-based network with spatial wavelength reuse is roughly 70% larger than the throughput of a comparable single-hop WDM network based on a passive star coupler (PSC).     

Traffic Studies for Fast Optical Switching in an Intelligent Optical Network

The optical layer of the transport network is expected in the (near) future to make the transition from a statically configured layer to a fully flexible, automatic and intelligent layer. Such an intelligent optical network (ION) allows to set up (or tear down) bandwidth between two nodes on demand, following a simple request of the client network layer: the so-called switched connections. For successful deployment of these switched connections it is of utmost importance to have a well-educated idea about the granularities of the traffic flows in the optical transport network. Deploying switched connections with a capacity of 10 Gbps to transport a traffic demand with a granularity of a few hundred Mbps does not exactly make efficient use of the network resources. In this paper, the granularity of the traffic demand between US metro areas is investigated for two future points in time, namely 2006 and 2010. For this study we focus on the traffic flows between two metro area entities: the points of presence (PoPs) or the main aggregation points of the customer traffic in a metro area, and the collector central offices (COs) or the nodes a bit further in the metro area, closer to the end-customers. We have found that a significant portion of the total traffic volume at these moments in time will qualify for transport using switched connections with a capacity of 10 Gbps. According to our study, in 2006 around one third of the traffic will qualify for transportation in such 10 Gbps connections between PoPs in different metro areas, while by 2010 this amount will have increased to more than 99%. The traffic granularity between the collector COs, however, will in 2006 still be too small to justify the use of direct 10 Gbps connections, but in 2010 almost three quarter of the traffic could make use of 10 Gbps direct connections from collector CO to collector CO. These results enable us to sketch the expected network evolution scenario and determine the type and size of equipment needed in the different steps of the network evolution. The optical edge aggregation switches will have to be moved deeper into the metro area with time: in 2006 they will be needed at the PoPs, while by 2010 they could be placed at the collector COs.     

AWG-based metro WDM networking

A plethora of metropolitan area wavelength-division multiplexing networks have been proposed and examined in recent years with the aim to alleviate the bandwidth bottleneck between increasingly higher-speed local/access networks and high-speed backbone networks. Many of the considered metropolitan area networks use the arrayed waveguide grating as an optical building block. As we review in this article, in ring, interconnected ring, and meshed metro WDM networks, the AWG is typically used to realize wavelength multiplexers, demultiplexers, or optical add-drop multiplexers without capitalizing on spatial wavelength reuse. By using the AWG as a wavelength router, highly efficient star metro WDM networks can be realized due to extensive spatial wavelength reuse. We give an overview of star metro WDM networks that are able to meet modular upgradability, transparency, flexibility, efficiency, reliability, and protection requirements of future metro networks. AWG-based star networks also enable an evolution path of ring networks toward highly efficient and fault-tolerant hybrid star-ring metro network solutions.     

Improved approaches for cost-effective traffic grooming in WDM ringnetworks: ILP formulations and single-hop and multihop connections

Traffic grooming is the term used to describe how different traffic streams are packed into higher speed streams. In a synchronous optical network-wavelength division multiplexing (SONET-WDM) ring network, each wavelength can carry several lower-rate traffic streams in time division (TDM) fashion. The traffic demand, which is an integer multiple of the timeslot capacity, between any two nodes is established on several TDM virtual connections. A virtual connection needs to be added and dropped only at the two end nodes of the connection; as a result, the electronic add-drop multiplexers (ADMs) at intermediate nodes (if there are any) will electronically bypass this timeslot. Instead of having an ADM on every wavelength at every node, it may be possible to have some nodes on some wavelength where no add-drop is needed on any timeslot; thus, the total number of ADMs in the network (and, hence, the network cost) can be reduced. Under the static traffic pattern, the savings can be maximized by carefully packing the virtual connections into wavelengths. In this work, we allow arbitrary (nonuniform) traffic and we present a formal mathematical definition of the problem, which turns out to be an integer linear program (ILP). Then, we propose a simulated-annealing-based heuristic algorithm for the case where all the traffic is carried on directly connected virtual connections (referred to as the single-hop case). Next, we study the case where a hub node is used to bridge traffic from different wavelengths (referred to as the multihop case). We find the following main results. The simulated-annealing-based approach has been found to achieve the best results, so far, in most cases, relative to other comparable approaches proposed in the literature. In general, a multihop approach can achieve better equipment savings when the traffic-grooming ratio is large, but it consumes more bandwidth     

Effective wavelength assignment algorithms for optimizing designcosts in SONET/WDM rings

In high-speed wavelength-division-multiplexed synchronous optical network (SONET) ring networks, the terminal equipment costs associated with electronic multiplexing can be predominantly high. Placing a wavelength add-drop multiplexer (WADM) at each network node allows certain wavelengths to optically bypass the node without being electronically terminated. This approach can effectively reduce the total equipment cost if connections and channels are appropriately assigned in traffic grooming. In this paper, we present a series of wavelength optimization and wavelength assignment algorithms with the objective to optimize the number of required SONET add-drop multiplexers and yet minimizes the number of wavelengths in both unidirectional and bidirectional rings under an arbitrary grooming factor. In our analysis, we have considered both uniform and general nonuniform all-to-all network traffic. As a simple model for realistic traffic patterns, a special case of nonuniform traffic, distance-dependent traffic, is analyzed in detail. Significant ADM savings are observed for different traffic scenarios using our proposed algorithms     

The arrayed-waveguide grating-based single-hop WDM network: an architecture for efficient multicasting

Research on multicasting in single-hop wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) networks has so far focused on networks based on the passive star coupler (PSC), a broadcast device. It has been shown that multicasting performance is improved by partitioning multicast transmissions into multiple multicast copies. However, the channel bottleneck of the PSC, which does not allow for spatial wavelength reuse, restricts the multicast performance. We investigate multicasting in a single-hop WDM network that is based on an arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG), a wavelength routing device that allows for spatial wavelength reuse. In our network, optical multicasting is enabled by wavelength-insensitive splitters that are attached to the AWG output ports. Multicasts are partitioned among the splitters and each multicast copy is routed to a different splitter by sending it on a different wavelength. We demonstrate that the spatial wavelength reuse in our network significantly improves the throughput-delay performance for multicast traffic. By means of analysis and simulations, we also demonstrate that, for a typical mix of unicast and multicast traffic, the throughput-delay performance is dramatically increased by transmitting multicast packets concurrently with control information in the reservation medium access control protocol of our AWG-based network.     

Hierarchical Ring Network Design Using Branch-and-Price

We consider the problem of designing hierarchical two layer ring networks. The top layer consists of a federal-ring which establishes connection between a number of node disjoint metro-rings in a bottom layer. The objective is to minimize the costs of links in the network, taking both the fixed link establishment costs and the link capacity costs into account.Hierarchical ring network design problems combines the following optimization problems: Clustering, hub selection, metro ring design, federal ring design and routing problems. In this paper a branch-and-price algorithm is presented for jointly solving the clustering problem, the metro ring design problem and the routing problem. Computational results are given for networks with up to 36 nodes.     

Hub‐polling‐based IEEE 802.11 PCF with integrated QoS differentiation

IEEE 802.11 is one of the most influential wireless LAN (WLAN) standards. Point coordination function (PCF) is its medium access control (MAC) protocol with real‐time traffic (rt‐traffic) quality‐of‐service (QoS) guarantees. In PCF, it is very likely that non‐real‐time traffic (nrt‐traffic) will use the contention free period (CFP) that should be dedicated to traffic having higher priority such as rt‐traffic. Therefore, a modified PCF protocol called MPCF, which is based on hub polling and an integrated QoS differentiation, is presented in this paper. With the integrated QoS differentiation, MPCF can prioritize bandwidth requests according to service classes and QoS requirements. With hub polling, MPCF can reduce the bandwidth for control frames and improve the network throughput. A simple and accurate analytical model is derived and presented in this paper to calculate the system throughput of MPCF. Simulation results show that MPCF protocol is much better than PCF in terms of system capacity and rt‐traffic QoS guarantees. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SDH以太共享环在城域网的应用

随着因特网和数据业务的爆炸性增长，城域网的主要业务正在从话音向数据转移。然而过去的城域传送网是为话音业务设计的，所以采用的是TDMM网络(SDH、SONET)。本首先介绍了基于SDH网络传送数据业务的几种新技术，如：POS、GFP、LCAS、RPR、共享以太环等，以及可以实现业务隔离、保证安全的VLAN、VLAN嵌套技术，然后对各种城域网数据传输技术进行了比较，最后分新了薪一代的MSTP设各府该具有的几个特点。     

Online connection provisioning in metro optical WDM networks using reconfigurable OADMs

Optical add/drop multiplexers (OADMs) can significantly reduce the cost of metro optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) ring networks by allowing traffic to bypass intermediate nodes without expensive opto-electro-opto (O-E-O) conversion. Some traditional OADMs, called fixed OADMs (FOADMs), can only add/drop traffic on a specific wavelength. Reconfigurable OADMs (ROADMs) are emerging, which can add/drop traffic onto/from different wavelengths at different time. ROADMs provide desirable flexibility, enable fast provisioning of dynamic traffic, and save capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx). In order to be cost effective, some ROADMs employ architectures that tune the ROADM continuously from one wavelength to another, crossing through all the wavelengths in between, which may cause interference to the connections, if any, on those wavelengths being crossed. In order to prevent existing connections from being interrupted, a constraint needs to be imposed that ROADMs cannot cross working wavelengths when tuning. In this paper, the design and the benefits of metro optical WDM network architectures using ROADMs and the impact of this tuning constraint on the performance of the network are investigated. The dynamic traffic provisioning problem is analyzed and divided into two subproblems: 1) a traditional one on resource allocation; and 2) a new subproblem on tuning-head positioning (TP). Several heuristics for each subproblem are developed to combat the tuning constraint. Results from our simulation experiments show that the tuning constraint can significantly affect the network performance in terms of overall connection blocking probability, and good heuristics for network control and management are needed to overcome this tuning constraint.     

Reducing electronic multiplexing costs in SONET/WDM rings with dynamically changing traffic

In this paper, we consider traffic grooming in WDM/SONET ring networks when the offered traffic is characterized by a set of traffic matrices. Our objective is to minimize the cost of electronic add/drop multiplexers (ADMs) in the network, while being able to support any offered traffic matrix in a rearrangeably nonblocking manner. We provide several methods for reducing the required number of ADMs for an arbitrary class of traffic matrices. We then consider the special case where the only restriction on the offered traffic is a constraint on the number of circuits a node may source at any given time. For this case, we provide a lower bound on the number of ADMs required and give conditions that a network must satisfy in order for it to support the desired set of traffic patterns. Circuit assignment and ADM placement algorithms with performance close to this lower bound are provided. These algorithms are shown to reduce the electronic costs of a network by up to 27%. Finally, we discuss extensions of this work for supporting dynamic traffic in a wide-sense or strict sense nonblocking manner as well as the benefits of using a hub node and tunable transceivers. Much of this work relies on showing that these grooming problems can often be formulated as standard combinatorial optimization problems.     

Nonuniform Arrayed Waveguide Gratings for Flat-Top Passband Transfer Function

The passband frequency response of an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) is improved for better performance in wavelength-division multiplexing applications. Using the lengths of array arms as optimization variables, an optimization method is employed to obtain an ideal flat-top transfer function. Two different definitions of the desired transfer function to achieve the ideal flat-top response are given, and their results are compared. Rigorous mathematical derivation of the transfer function and definition of suitable objective functions generate closed-form expressions for the gradient vector of the objective function with respect to the optimization variables, thus enabling the implementation of a robust quasi-Newton optimization algorithm. This, in turn, provides accurate results and fast convergence, despite a large number of optimizing variables. It is shown that the optimized nonuniform AWG will have a flat passband with a broad bandwidth that is 2.3 times larger than that of an ordinary uniform AWG.     

Mathematical formulation of provisioning of connections with advance reservation in metro WDM ring networks using reconfigurable OADMs (ROADMs) with tuning constraint

Optical add/drop multiplexers (OADMs) can significantly reduce the cost of metro optical wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) ring networks by allowing traffic to bypass intermediate nodes without expensive opto-electro-opto (O-E-O) conversion. Some traditional OADMs, called fixed OADMs (FOADMs), can only add/drop traffic on a specific wavelength. Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) are emerging, which can add/drop traffic onto/from different wavelengths at different time. ROADMs provide desirable flexibility, enable fast provisioning of dynamic traffic, and save capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx). In order to be cost-effective, some ROADMs employ architectures that tune the ROADM continuously from one wavelength to another, crossing through all the wavelengths in-between, which may cause interference to the connections, if any, on those wavelengths being crossed. In order to prevent existing connections from being interrupted, a constraint needs to be imposed that ROADMs cannot cross working wavelengths when tuning. In this study, the design and the benefits of metro optical WDM network architectures using ROADMs and the impact of this tuning constraint on the performance of the network are investigated. Mathematical formulation of the problem of provisioning of connections with advance reservation, in which the arrival time and departure time of all the connections are known in advance, is presented, and results for a small network are shown.     

New concept in long-reach PON Planning: BER-aware wavelength allocation

With the use of arrayed-waveguide grating (AWG) and erbium-doped-fiber amplifier (EDFA), the long-reach passive optical network (LR-PON) can provide enormous bandwidth over large distances. However, these new technologies can also deteriorate the receivers' bit-error rate (BER) performance. By bringing the concept of BER-awareness into network planning, we can alleviate the performance deterioration, which could in turn lead to simpler design of receiver and thus lower the total cost of LR-PON.The effects of AWG and EDFA on BER are studied in this paper. An analytical model of BER performance is developed as a function of the output port location in the AWG and the distance of the receiver from the AWG. Not only does the proposed model capture the power loss caused by AWG, but it also accounts for several transmission impairments, including the beat noise due to inter-channel crosstalk in the AWG, the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise related to EDFA, and the thermal noise related to the receiver. Based on this model, we propose both short-term and long-term distance-aware wavelength allocation schemes, which balance the BER among the optical network units (ONUs) at different distance. Simulation results show that average BER improves and the relative standard deviation decreases.     

The role of switching in reducing the number of electronic ports in WDM networks

We consider the role of switching in minimizing the number of electronic ports [e.g., synchronous optical network (SONET) add/drop multiplexers] in an optical network that carries subwavelength traffic. Providing nodes with the ability to switch traffic between wavelengths, such as through the use of SONET cross-connects, can reduce the required number of electronic ports. We show that only limited switching ability is needed for significant reductions in the number of ports. First, we consider architectures where certain "hub" nodes can switch traffic between wavelengths and other nodes have no switching capability. For such architectures, we provide a lower bound on the number of electronic ports that is a function of the number of hub nodes. We show that our lower bound is relatively tight by providing routing and grooming algorithms that nearly achieve the bound. For uniform traffic, we show that the number of electronic ports is nearly minimized when the number of hub nodes used is equal to the number of wavelengths of traffic generated by each node. Next, we consider architectures where the switching ability is distributed throughout the network. Such architectures are shown to require a similar number of ports as the hub architectures, but with a significantly smaller "switching cost." We give an algorithm for designing such architectures and characterize a class of topologies, where the minimum number of ports is used. Finally, we provide a general upper bound on the amount of switching required in the network. For uniform traffic, our bound shows that as the size of the network increases, each traffic stream must be switched at most once in order to achieve the minimum port count.     

A large-scale AWG-based single-hop WDM network using couplers with collision avoidance

Single-hop wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks based on a central arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) have attracted a great deal of attention as a solution for metropolitan area network applications because they can achieve high throughput with reduced cost due to the periodic wavelength-routing property of the AWG. Unfortunately, scalability is a significant problem in an AWG-based single-hop WDM network because the number of transceivers required at each node is equal to the total number of nodes. This problem can be solved by providing optical couplers between the AWG and the nodes and by aggregating multiple nodes before connecting to the AWG. In this case, however, packet collisions at the couplers will seriously increase the packet network delay. Therefore, we propose a novel AWG-based single-hop WDM network in which an autonomic collision avoidance mechanism is introduced in the couplers. We derive the optimum number of couplers for this architecture. Through numerical study, we clarify that the proposed network architecture can reduce the total network cost dramatically.     

Performance of buffered banyan networks under nonuniform trafficpatterns

An analytical method of evaluating the performance of the buffered banyan packet-switching network under nonuniform traffic patterns is presented. It is shown that nonuniform traffic can have a detrimental effect on the performance of the network. The analytical model is extended to evaluate the performance of multibuffer and parallel banyan networks. These modified networks are shown to have better throughput capacity and delay performance than the single-buffer banyan network