Abstract: | The ever-increasing demand for network bandwidth makes network survivability an issue of great concern. Lightpath restoration is a valuable approach to guaranteeing an acceptable level of survivability in WDM optical networks with better resource utilization than that of its protection counterpart. Active restoration (AR) is a newly proposed lightpath restoration scheme [M. Mostafa et al. OSA Journal of Optical Networking, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 247–260] that combines the best of protection and reactive restoration while avoiding their shortcomings. In this paper, we conduct detailed performance analysis on the restoration probability of AR-based WDM networks. In particular, analytical models of restoration probability are developed respectively for networks with full-wavelength conversion capability and for networks without wavelength conversion capability under different backup path searching schemes. Based on the new models, we investigate the effects of wavelength availability, wavelength conversion capability, path length as well as backup path seeking methods on the restoration probability. |