A Zoom-In Approach to Design SDH Mesh Restorable Networks

Mesh restorable networks based on SONET (Synchronous Optical Network, standard optical transmission technology widely accepted and implemented in North America) or SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy, the European standard currently adopted by the major European telecom operators) are an economically attractive solution in areas where high demand and high connectivity are involved (Wu, 1995). In these networks, the reconfiguration capability of the digital cross connect systems (DCS) allows to reroute the demand affected by network failures. The degree of sharing of spare capacity in networks based on this architecture is high.This paper presents a heuristic algorithm for solving the near-optimal design of SDH mesh-type link restorable networks, i.e. determining the network topology and assigning the capacity to transport the demand in normal situations and to allow full link restorability in case of single link failures. The algorithm is based on a Zoom-In technique, a novel approach which forms a compromise between sequential and integrated techniques. The different building blocks of the algorithm are tested extensively and compared with other results mentioned in literature. Comparison of the simulation results for the overall design problem with other solution techniques indicates that the Zoom-In method is a quite promising approach, able to combine the accuracy of integrated approaches with the calculation speed of sequential approaches.