Local restoration for bandwidth guaranteed connections in mobile optical backbone networks

We consider a mobile backbone network with free space optical point-to-point links. Each backbone node moves randomly but with low mobility, and future movement is not predictable. Requests for aggregate bandwidth between pairs of backbone nodes arrive one-by-one, and a bandwidth guaranteed connection is established if there are sufficient network resources (link bandwidth and node transceivers); otherwise, the request is rejected. Each request has a finite duration after which the bandwidth guaranteed connection is released. The connection may break due to the movement of the backbone nodes, thus necessitating a mechanism for connection restoration. We introduce a new type of mobile node, referred to as a controllable restoration agent, that may be used to restore broken connections. An online algorithm is developed to determine where to position the agents to provide maximum protection, given the locations of the nodes and the set of existing connections. It is shown that by using the algorithm to place a limited number of agents strategically, a significant improvement in network performance can be achieved.