Dynamic resource sharing protection using label stacking and burst multiplexing in optical burst switched networks

A protection and restoration mechanism is essential to provide reliable traffic transmission in networks, but it is not easy to apply existing protection mechanisms to optical burst-switching (OBS) networks, because of the unique properties of OBS. The authors introduce a 1:1 link-based protection that minimises burst losses by deflecting bursts until a source ingress router arbitrates a working path to a backup path when a link failure occurs. The authors also propose a genuine dynamic resource sharing (DRS) link protection in order to achieve high efficiency in network resource allocation and reliable protection simultaneously in OBS networks. DRS employs burst-multiplexing and label-stacking techniques in backup channel selection and always reserves an optimal number of backup channels according to the changes in traffic load in a working link and the quality of service (QoS) requirements of bursts. Simulation results show that the DRS can provide the same protection reliability with just half of the backup channels needed in a normal 1:1 protection in a light-load case, while guaranteeing the QoS requirements of class bursts. The authors show that this property also makes backup link sharing among a number of working links possible.