Wavelength and opto-electro-opto sharing and optimization in wavelength division multiplexing mesh networks with path protection

Given a physical network topology and a traffic demand, the problem of designing a survivable network with path protection is to select primary and backup paths based on resource optimization. A common approach to minimize resources is sharing. This problem has been investigated with the goal of optimizing the number of channels (i.e., wavelengths) needed for backup paths by imposing capacity sharing. However, because of the need and the cost for other devices, such as opto-electro-opto (OEO) regenerators, network provisioning should also take into consideration such resources in the optimization process. We address the problem of routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) for survivable networks with the objective of simultaneously optimizing wavelength links and OEOs. An integer linear program solution, a tabu search heuristic, and a genetic algorithm are proposed, and their performance is experimentally evaluated through extensive simulation. Our simulation results confirm an average of 30% reduction in the number of OEOs compared to that required with the well known shared-path protection scheme.