NICER: A distributed dynamic shared-backup path-allocation procedure for transmission-impaired WDM optical networks

Survivability in transparent optical networks is a critical concern for network operators. Current survivability techniques for shared protection are mainly based on a centralized off-line pre-planning of the lightpaths. In addition, the presence of Physical Layer Impairments (PLIs) and multi-channel effects must be accurately considered. In this paper we propose a distributed on-line procedure called NICER to allocate shared backup capacity in transmission-impaired optical transparent networks. To this account, we present the on-line algorithms useful to setup the Label Switched Paths (LSPs) in a Generalized MPLS (GMPLS) controlled network and to choose the wavelengths to be eventually shared by the backup lightpaths, given the information about the PLIs distributed in the network. Furthermore, through some simulations we show the performance of the proposed survivability procedure.