Network Protection and Restoration in Optical Networks: A Comprehensive Study

Fault management has become critical in managing survivability of high speed networks. In an Optical WDM network, link or path failure may occur very frequently which may cause a great amount of data loss if the link is not restored to reroute the affected traffic accurately and quickly using the redundancy the network. Impact of failure is aggravated with extremely high volume of traffic carried on WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) networks .Most research to date in survivable optical network design and operation focuses on single link failures, however, the occurrence of multiple-link failures are not uncommon in a network topology. In this paper existing protection and restoration techniques proposed for optical network are critically reviewed and analyzed and existing work in protection and restoration has to be expanded so that survivability of network can make better and result into efficient management of faults. Keywords--Optical network, WDM, Protection, Restoration, survivability, Network topology F International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology (IJRET) Vol. 2, No. 1, 2013 ISSN 2277 – 4378