Design and analysis of optical networking protocols

The Internet has emerged as one of the most widely used infrastructures that supports multiple applications with varying service requirements. The communication infrastructure of the Internet has evolved into a hybrid architecture consisting of, for example, wireless, wireline, optical, and satellite networks, among others. Several challenges arise in offering end-to-end services over such a hybrid network, some of which being ensuring reliability, providing for recovery in the wake of failures, and offering services with quality of service (QoS). Various protocols have been developed to support QoS over the internet. The hybrid architecture supports multilayer network allowing multiple IP protocols to run on top of optical layer for efficient use of backbone network. One of the main challenges in any network with dynamic traffic is to develop efficient algorithms and protocols that minimize the blocking probability in establishing an end-to-end session. Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) has been proposed as the candidate of choice for the control plane to efficiently route the offered traffic through a routed or switched network with QoS requirement. The design of efficient routing and recovery mechanism for multilayer network is one of the issues that determines the network performance. This dissertation proposes to develop and modify protocols within GMPLS framework that take full advantage of WDM/DWDM optical layer, taking into consideration the limitations imposed by optical network. Furthermore, the dissertation focuses on the problems of dynamically establishing light paths, autonomously recovering from failure in IP over WDM multilayer networks, and on dynamic lightpath establishment and autonomous recovery using GMPLS for free space optical communication (FSO) with automatic tracking transceivers.