Virtual nodes scheme for survivable optical mesh networks

Abstract

The progress of the mesh networks technology makes optical networks more complex. An adverse result is the increased network vulnerability. It's difficult for current methods of centralized restoration to deal with the problem mentioned above. A novel survival scheme, virtual nodes scheme, is proposed in this paper. The character of network topology is considered as an important factor in this scheme. The major idea of this scheme is dividing network into some subnets, which are named as virtual nodes, and different survival approaches are adopted within each virtual node and among virtual nodes. Each virtual node not only can dispose the interior failures independently, but also can settle faults collaborating with other virtual nodes. Compared with current survival schemes, which regard each node or link as a manageable object, virtual nodes scheme take each virtual node as a manageable object. Virtual nodes scheme can find failures and restore rapidly. In addition, utilization of capacity is optimized within each virtual node. Therefore, total capacity of network is distributed efficiently. Realization of virtual nodes scheme is explained in this paper. Through theoretical analysis and computer simulation, the performance of this new scheme is demonstrated.