Sustaintable Next Generation Networks design: A new BlueGreen approach

Next Generation Networks (NGNs) need to handle both high level of service reliability by network survivability mechanism of overprovision redundant network resources (i.e., Blue criteria), as well as minimizing energy cost by turning off unnecessary network resources (i.e., Green criteria). There is an inherent contradiction on satisfying both these Blue and Green requirements simultaneously. In effect this challenging problem can be formulated as a global optimization problem, where the network working and backup components such as nodes and links, and their energy cost is considered as a resource, and their utilization should be minimized. The case studies confirm that the BlueGreen approach is effective to integrate both service reliability and energy efficiency to achieve the specified BlueGreen target.