Optical network control, engineering and switching

Currently the optical network is evolving to an intelligent transport infrastructure, in order to offer on-demand bandwidth directly to the Internet Protocol (IP) and other client networks through dynamic reconfigurations. This evolution raises a variety of challenges for optical network control, traffic engineering, and optical switching. The major focus of this study is in these three areas. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction of the background for the optical network and this study.; In Chapter 2, an IP-centric control plane based on the Multi-Protocol Lambda Switching/Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPλS/GMPLS) is presented to use IP protocols and mechanisms for automatic lightpath routing, signaling, protection and restoration in an optical network. A comparative study of the centralized and distributed control schemes using the control plane test bed is then presented. We have found that the distributed control scheme can achieve a similar performance to the centralized control scheme with acceptable overhead. Finally, a joint working and protection light-path selection approach is discussed to substantially improve the lightpath selection performance in the control plane.; Chapter 3 discusses the online traffic engineering and management issues in an inter-networking environment between the optical network and its client networks. The single hop and multi-hop heuristics are introduced first. The performance of the single hop approach is analyzed through a theoretical model using the queueing theory and Erlang Fixed-Point Approximation. Two online traffic grooming and management approaches are proposed. The performance is studied through simulations. We have found a dramatic performance improvement over the single hop and multi-hop heuristics.; In Chapter 4, the next generation optical switching technologies supporting data traffic transport are discussed. A comparative study is performed on the optical burst switching and optical flow switching. We have found that the optical burst switching is superior for transport of bursty data traffic. A hybrid optical switching approach is proposed to utilize the existing infrastructure of the optical circuit switching. This will better support the bursty data traffic transport as well as retain many merits of the optical circuit switching.