Summary:

In recent years, it has become clear that the transportation of the data of IP (Internet Protocol) based applications will be the dominant traffic in future networks. At the same time Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) has matured sufficiently to give the very high-capacity networks needed to transport the ever-increasing amount of information. Despite the recent telecommunication industry crisis, traffic kept growing at a very fast pace. The rapid growth of IP technology coupled with the very high capacity yielded by WDM technology have encouraged investigation on IP-over-WDM networks, a solution where the IP traffic is sent directly over the optical network without intermediate layers, such as SDH (Synchronous Digital Hiererarchy). Despite the advantages offered by the simplification of the protocol stack, before the industry crisis many carrier have invested significantly in survivable voice transport infrastructures SONET/SDH and other data transport technologies such as frame relay and ATM networks, and hence it is unlikely that carriers deploy new technologies unless there is a sound near term return on investment. In spite of this economic situation or maybe due to this economic situation, research on optical networks did not ended, by contrary research on optical networks has gained new life and is trying to answer to the challenge of providing cost effective solution for IP optical backbones.

 The overall objective of this project is to investigate and compare network architectures alternatives for cost effective, reliable, scalable and flexible IP backbones. In this project we propose to investigate key issues that will contribute to the design and assessment of integration of IP over WDM networks. IP/WDM networks will be investigated and compared with alternative backbone IP architectures according to multiple parameters (network efficiency, cost, survivability schemes, reconfigurability, QoS-Quality of Service proprieties and grooming capacities). The reduction in network layers and therefore technologies in the protocol stack makes the IP-over-WDM solution very attractive but challenging at the same time. Several key features that ATM and SONET/SDH offered, such as QoS, gromming capacities and survivability proprieties which need to be incorporated in the new protocol stack, will be addressed.

The control plane of IP over WDM networks has been the subject of intensive research and is currently being standardized under the umbrella of the automatic switched optical network (ASON) and the generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) framework. We propose to compare and identify fast and efficient survivability schemes and clarify how these survivability schemes can be implemented by GMPLS. We will focus on survivability issues such as: provision strategies, restoration time, service availability and restorability, protection of low speed connections of different bandwidth granularities. Also, the project will define experiments to assess the Project results and design a test-bed for future evaluation.  advantages of RSOA in RoF systems and can be applied to other wireless networks such as 3G.

1.     PhD Thesis

Claunir Pavan, ‘Dimensionamento de Redes Ópticas Multicamada / Dimensioning of Multilayer Optical networksWavelength Division Multiplexing,’  Universidade de Aveiro, end date 2011. Supervisor: Armando Pinto.

Álvaro Barradas,’ Quality of Service in Optical Burst Switiching Networks,’ Universidade do Algarve, end date 2009. Supervisor: Carmo Medeiros.

2.     MSc Dissertations

Rui Morais, A Topologia Óptima em Redes Ópticas Multi-Camada, Dissertação de Mestrado, Universidade de Aveiro, 2008.

Abel Correia, Planeamento e Dimensionamento de Redes Ópticas com Encaminhamento ao Nível da Camada Óptica, Dissertação de Mestrado, Universidade de Aveiro, 2008.

Paulo Rocha, ‘Análise do Desempenho e Custo de Duas Estratégias de Implementação de Redes IP sobre WDM’, Projecto de fim de curso, Universidade do Algarve, Outubro 2007.

Mark Guerreiro e Ricardo Avó, ´Protocolo de sinalização para reserva de ligações em redes WDM´, Universidade do Algarve, Novembro 2006.

3.     Book Chapters

M.C.R. Medeiros and N.S.C. Correia, ‘Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching: Survivability Mechanisms’, Chapter in Encyclopedia of Internet Technologies and Applications, Idea Group Reference, Dec. 2007.

N.S.C. Correia and M.C.R. Medeiros, ‘Optical Network Survivability’, Chapter in Encyclopedia of Internet Technologies and Applications, Idea Group Reference, Dec. 2007.  

4.     Journal Papers

Claunir Pavan, Abel Ricardo Correia, Rui Manuel Morais, José R. Ferreira da Rocha, and Armando Nolasco Pinto, Restoration Capacity in Optical Mesh Networks, submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

N.S. Correia, J. Coimbra and M.C.R. Medeiros Sparse traffic grooming in WDM networks using coarse granularity  OXCs, Photonic Network Communications, pp:127-149, August 2008.

N.S.C. Correia and M.C.R. Medeiros, ´Cost Effectiveness of Protection Schemes for IP-over-WDM Networks´, OSA Journal of Optical Networking, vol.6, nº3, pp.248-269, March 2007.

N.S.C. Correia and M.C.R. Medeiros, ‘Protection Schemes for IP-over-WDM: throughput and recovery time comparison’, Photonic Network Communications, pp:127-149, March 2006.

5.     Conference Papers with Proceedings

A. L. Barradas and M.C.R. Medeiros, ‘Pre-planned Optical Burst Switching Routing’, in Proc. International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON)-Mediterranean Winter’08, invited paper, Marakesh, 11-13 December 2008.

M. Guerreiro, A.L. Barradas , M.C.R Medeiros “Path Selection Strategy for OBS Networks Based on a Probabilistic Model for the Link Demands Cranfield (Multi-Strand Conference, Cranfield, 6 - 7 May 2008.

N. S. C. Correia, J. Coimbra, and M. C. R. Medeiros,A Minimization Cost Heuristic Approach for Traffic Grooming in IP-over-WDM Networks,  International Conference on Systems and Networks Communications, ICSNC, 26-31  Oct. 2008.

A.L. Barradas, M.C.R. Medeiros: An OMNeT++ Model for the Evaluation of OBS Routing Strategies, Proceedings of OMNeT++ 2008 (worshop on  Simutools 2008), Marseille, 3-7 March 2008.

Pavan, C.; R. Morais; A. Correia; Pinto, A. N.; "Assessment of an Expectation Model for the Dimensioning Problem in Optical Networks", Proc Symp. on Enabling Optical Networks - SEON, Porto, Portugal, Vol. , pp. 91 - 92, June, 2008.

Pavan, C.; R. Morais; A. Correia; Pinto, A. N.; "Dimensioning of Optical Networks with Incomplete Information", Proc Advanced International Conf. on Telecommunications, Athens, Greece, Vol. -, pp. 261 - 264, June, 2008.

Pavan, C.; R. Morais; A. Correia; Pinto, A. N.; "Impact of the mean nodal degree on optical networks", Proc Photonics, Montreal, Canada, Vol. 7099, pp. 709910-1 - 709910-7, June, 2008.

Pavan, C.; A. Correia; Pinto, A. N.; "A Statistical Model for the Average Number of Hops in Optical Networks", Proc Conf. on Telecommunications - ConfTele, Peniche, Portugal, Vol. 1, pp. 465 - 467, May, 2007.

N.S.C. Correia, J. Coimbra, and M.C.R. Medeiros, ´A Manageable and Bandwidth Effective Solution for Traffic Grooming in IP-over-WDM Networks´, Third International Conference on Networking and Services, ICNS, June 19-25, 2007.

J. Coimbra, N.S.C. Correia and M.C.R. Medeiros, ‘Distributed algorithm for traffic grooming in IP-over-WDM network´, EUROCON 2007, pp. 2144-2149, September 2007.

A. L. Barradas and M.C.R. Medeiros, ‘Path Selection Strategies for OBS Networks Using Topological Network Information’, in Proc. International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON)-Mediterranean Winter’07, paper Fr1B.4, Tunisia December 2007.

N.S.C. Correia and M.C.R. Medeiros, ‘Recovery time analysis of WDM protection schemes’, 8^th IEEE International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks, ITCON-2006, June 2006.

N.S.C. Correia and M.C.R. Medeiros, ’Effective protection using traffic grooming techniques’, IEEE Advanced Industrial Conference on Telecommunications, AICT-2006, pp:23-26, Feb. 2006.