Abstract—In this paper, we investigate the dynamic establishment of dependable connections in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks with the objectives of power saving and resource efficiency. According to the resource usage, i.e., assigned for primary paths, backup paths or free, and the state of network components (nodes and fiber links), i.e., active, sleep or off, we propose a dynamic power-aware shared path protection (DPA-SPP) algorithm. In order to reduce power consumption, to improve sharing of spare capacity, and to reduce blocking probability for connection requests, DPASPP encourages to establish a primary path for each connection request on active resources, to pack backup paths on sleep resources, and to leave more idle resources for future connection requests as far as possible while with a consideration to prevent a link with a very few number of free wavelengths to become a bottleneck link, which is beneficial to further improve the successful probability of connection establishments. Based on dynamic traffic with different load, the performance of DPA-SPP has been investigated via extensive simulations. The results show that DPA-SPP can efficiently improve the spare resource sharing and reduce the blocking probability while still achieving a considerable energy saving.

Index Terms—green networks; energy saving; shared path protection; spare capacity; dynamic

Cite: Rongxi He and Bin Lin, "Dynamic Power-aware Shared Path Protection Algorithms in WDM Mesh Networks," Journal of Communications, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 55-65, 2013. Doi: 10.12720/jcm.8.1.55-65