Comparison of Techniques to Mitigate Wavelength Contention in a Photonic Network with Frequent Optical Path Setups

Tazuko TOMIOKA
Hiroyuki IBE
Masatoshi SUZUKI
Jun TAKEHARA
Kyousuke DOBASHI
Hiroyuki INAMURA

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E89-B    No.4    pp.1214-1230
Publication Date: 2006/04/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e89-b.4.1214
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Switching for Communications
Keyword: 
limited number of transceivers,  DWDM,  GMPLS,  wavelength contention,  

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Summary: 
The characteristics of various techniques, including some new techniques, in mitigating wavelength contention in optical path setups were compared by simulations. The assumed network here is a WDM photonic network in which each node is equipped with a limited number of wavelength-tunable optical transceivers. In the photonic network, the frequency of optical path setups and releases is very high, because optical path lifetime is short and optical transceivers are time-shared, and therefore, the wavelength contention becomes a serious problem. In this paper, we propose four new techniques to mitigate the phenomenon. In those techniques, a new small-sized parameter, the history number, was introduced based on the conceptual requirements of the assumed network, namely, low-cost and low additional control load. The four proposed techniques are history recording (HR), history notifying (HN), conditional random selection (CRS), and HN with dithering target (HNDT). We have evaluated the characteristics of those techniques along with those of two conventional techniques: no mitigation and random selection (RS). The simulations were carried out while varying four parameters: the maximum generation number, the optical path lifetime, the number of wavelengths, and the number of optical transceivers per node. Consequently, it is clarified that for a sufficient number of wavelengths, namely, almost no limitation on number of wavelengths, the CRS technique is advantageous, and for a small number of wavelengths the HNDT technique is advantageous.