A Markov chain model for local path protection in mobile optical backbone networks

In this paper, we propose a protection scheme to improve quality of service in a mobile backbone network with free space optical point-to-point links. We assume that the backbone nodes are mobile and with unpredictable movements, and the traffic from an ingress node is routed to its corresponding egress nodes in a multi-hop way. The QoS demanding applications are vulnerable to mobility imposed link failures in such networks. The first contribution of this work is to introduce a scheme in which a set of controllable protection agents are deployed to provide protection of the paths in the critical points of the network. The second contribution is using a Markov chain model to evaluate potential risk or potential reward of placing a protection agent in a specific place of the network. Our simulation experiments show that by using our scheme to strategically place a limited number of protection agents, a significant improvement in network performance is achieved.