A novel algorithm to integrate synchronous digital hierarchy networks into Optical Transport Network using mixed line rates

In this era of high data transfer speeds and new age technologies, Optical Transport Network (OTN) along with its newly introduced Optical Transport Hierarchy (OTH) has provided a lease of life to legacy low rate networks. It has provided a common backbone for multiple data rates to coexist on same fiber along with the enhanced transmission reach. The cost effective Optical Transport Network design has always been a complex issue due to the presence of multiple variables like number of fibers on each link, available data rates on each fiber, the wavelength count, transmission reach at each data rate, etc. In this paper an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model has been presented to solve Routing problem for Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) over OTN over DWDM design. Optical Transport Hierarchy (OTH) has been used to integrate heterogenous SDH/SONET operating at different rates (STM-16, STM-64 and STM-256) into a single network supporting mixed line rates. These rates can coexist in a same fiber but each rate carries different cost with it. The objective function aims at finding the least cost routing solution by looking at different tradeoffs between the Capital Expenditure and the operational expenditure. Certainly different variables like the number of fibers and wavelengths, transmission reach, etc. are a factor in it. A mechanism has been put to monitor the Bit Error Rate (BER) levels as well. For evaluating the ILP model, 18 Node 38 Link European Optical Network was considered as the reference model and two ordering techniques, namely, full ILP and highest rate first (HRF) were used for deriving the results. The ILP model was designed with minimum of decision variables so in spite of big reference network it converges much faster. Under the given conditions, full ILP gave least cost network whereas HRF ordering took least time for ILP to converge.