Lightpath establishment in PCE-based dynamic transparent optical networks assisted by end-to-end quality of transmission estimation

We propose a lightpath establishment technique for transparent optical networks, exploiting the path computation element (PCE) architecture, which leverages an end-to-end estimation framework called network krigingrdquo. The scheme relies on the exploitation of probing data from past lightpath establishments to estimate the Quality of Transmission (QoT) of new lightpaths before they are established. We use network kriging to estimate end-to-end metrics such as Quality of Transmission (QoT) for a lightpath to be established, based on measured data from other, previously established or probed, lightpaths. Network kriging exploits the correlation between QoT metrics of lightpaths that share the same links in order to perform QoT estimation. In our lightpath establishment scheme, several attempts are performed to establish a lightpath. Our technique does not attempt to establish lightpaths with estimated poor QoT. As a consequence, the technique reduces the probability that a lightpath establishment attempt is unsuccessful, and reduces the number of successive attempts to successfully establish lightpaths. Simulation results show on a sample network that, to achieve a given blocking rate, only two establishment attempts are needed if network kriging is used, as opposed to three when it is not.