EDF-based connection setup management in WDM optical networks. (c2009)

Abstract

The worldwide network domain tendency to evolve towards dynamic Quality of Service (QoS) enabled wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks is imminent. WDM has drastically increased the transmission capacity of today’s optical networks. An increase in the available bandwidth is promoting the introduction of new services, each having different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Improving connection setup conditions is considered to be one of the major requirements in this regard. This work addresses the interesting topic of quality of service (QoS) aware connection setup provisioning in WDM optical networks. The impact that the connection setup time of an optical connection may have on the setup of a connection has not been adequately addressed in the open literature. As such, this work presents a novel connection setup mechanism that uses the optical connection setup time as a service differentiator during connection provisioning. The proposed connection setup mechanism utilizes the well-known Earliest Deadline First (EDF) queuing discipline to achieve deadline-based connection setup management with the deadline being the setup time requirement of an optical connection. The proposed EDF-based setup scheme has been proved to be optimal and it is expected to allow the network operator to improve the QoS perceived by their end customers. Performance of this novel scheme is analyzed by precisely calculating various measures, such as the fraction of connections provisioned prior to deadline expiration, and the average time it takes to successfully setup a connection. Our numerical results whose correctness was asserted through extensive simulations highlighted the service differentiation feature achieved by the EDF-based connection setup management approach.