Path protection in multi-fiber WDM networks with small-sized optical cross-connect node configuration

Abstract

Recent developments in optical network technologies have convincingly shown that, to meet the increasing bandwidth demands, it is more cost-effective and scalable to build multi-fiber WDM networks than to have more and more wavelengths in a single fiber. The developments of multi-fiber WDM networks, however, impose a big challenge that we have to devise very large-sized optical cross-connects (OXCs) which will remain as highly expensive and immature in the foreseeable near future. Existing results have shown that with properly-designed node configurations and appropriate routing and wavelength assignment policies, using small-sized OXCs instead of large-sized ones for node configuration won't necessarily lead to any significant degradation on network performance.