Design of Protected WDM Wheel Networks under Various Traffic Conditions

Abstract

Wavelength-division-multiplexing networks dimensioned for static connections could be used to accommodate an unpredictable increase of lightpath requests. We analyze the problem of the new carriers to deploy networks that provide them flexibility to deliver long-lived lightpaths on demand without capacity upgrade of the existing infrastructures. We investigate the influence of the connectivity factor in both the initial optimization and on the probability of accommodating the traffic expansion. We consider multifiber WDM ''wheel'' networks, a sequence of regular ring-to-mesh architectures, under various static traffic conditions. The optimization is carried out by means of a heuristic aimed at minimizing the number of fibers. The maximum allowable traffic scaling factor is evaluated by simulations with different initial network states that have already accommodated the static traffic.