The Multiple Path Protection of DWDM Backbone Optical Networks*

Primary transmission protection technology is based on the characteristics of SONET/SDH protection mechanism which provides two fiber path rings. A serious problem may arise in the architecture when two fiber links are simultaneously broken. Mesh protection networks can support many protection paths to address above issue, but the key components of optical cross-connect (OXC) or photonic cross-connect (PXC) are expensive for network providers. Therefore, this study proposes a novel protection mechanism with a low-cost equipment of optical protection switching (OPS) for building a multiple path protection architecture on DWDM backbone network. The proposed mechanism is named the double 8-type OPS back to back protection mechanism. It can support eight protection paths to improve the issues of the low-path 1 + 1 dedicated ring and expensive mesh protection networks. This experiment demonstrates the automatic protection switching (APS) simulation tool, and the proposed mechanism could satisfy all demands of protection standard (e.g., the protection switching within 50 ms)