Path Protection in Translucent WDM Optical Networks

Optical noise, chromatic dispersion, nonlinear effects, polarization mode dispersion (PMD) and cross-talk cause the quality of an optical signal to degrade as it propagates through the fibers in wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical networks. In a translucent network, regenerators are placed ay appropriate intervals to carry out 3R regeneration (re-amplify, re-shape and re-time). Translucent WDM networks are receiving attention as long-haul back bone networks. One important aspect of such networks that has not received attention is the possibility of cycles in the path of a translucent network. This research studies how we implement path protection in translucent networks, considering the possibility of cycles. We are developing a new scheme for dynamic lightpath allocation using the idea of shared path protection. We propose to study the performance of the scheme using a number of well known networks