Design and analysis of lightpath setup procedures in wavelength-routed all-optical networks

Wide area all-optical networks are emerging as practical and future-proof solution to the enormous bandwidth requirements of today's end users. Over the past few years, the field of all-optical networks has seen tremendous amount of research, development, and prototyping activities. Especially Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) have gained considerable attention. A large number of nodes in a WDM optical network can be connected by reusing only a few wavelengths. The objective of this research is to explore new and efficient lightpath setup and control procedures in WDM all optical networks. Lightpath setup requires calculation, reservation, setup and teardown of a path. A setup procedure can fail in any of these steps. Efficient control of the setup procedure and protocol to accomplish a successful lightpath setup are important fields of research. In this dissertation a survey of some of the important contributions made in design, analysis, and implementation of wide-area all-optical networks is presented first. Design issues of all-optical circuit and packet switched networks are also considered. Specifically, RAW problem in circuit switched all-optical networks, and logical topology design and routing problem in packet switched all-optical networks are considered. Analytical methods that are developed to estimate the performance and device requirements of all-optical networks are also reviewed. Heuristic approaches for solving the all-optical network design problems are then surveyed. Control and management issues of all-optical networks, which are getting increasing attention in the research and development community, are also discussed. Also presented are several prototyping and commercial development efforts of all-optical networks. Next, logical topology design for packet switched multihop optical networks is presented. Unlike circuit switched case, traffic from a source node to a destination node may travel via several intermediate electronic switching nodes. A new model that minimizes the average maximum logical link congestion has been studied. We also developed a linear program based one-hop traffic maximization scheme. Finally, a new approach for modeling call blocking probability, especially at intermediate nodes, is presented. Setup of a lightpath can fail at an intermediate node if the intermediate link is reserved by another lightpath request's RESERVE message. In other words, the selected wavelength on one or more of the links along the route might be reserved by another lightpath request while the setup procedure of the previous one is in progress. A new proposed model makes the analysis of call setup failures possible by evaluating the blocking probabilities at different stages of a call setup procedure.