Single-Fiber Access/Metro WDM Ring Architecture for Asymmetric Traffic Applications in Next Generation Networks

The next generation network (NGN) and the speed-up of access lines will sharply increase the demand for one-way applications such as internet protocol television (IP TV) and video on demand (VOD). One-way applications make the downlink bandwidth much larger than the uplink bandwidth. Asymmetric traffic is best supported by using different numbers of wavelengths in the uplink and downlink, which presumes the use of a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network. Unfortunately, the existing 2- or 4-fiber ring network architecture is symmetric, and so it cannot efficiently accommodate asymmetric paths. This paper proposes a novel 1-fiber WDM protection ring that offers a cost-effective optical network architecture for asymmetric traffic as well as symmetric traffic. It also proposes a new 1:1 protection switching scheme and automatic protection switching (APS) control protocol that can reduce capital expenditures for optical-electro-optical termination cards and provide nonrevertive protection switching with extra traffic and APS with end-to-end supervision including optical switching fabrics. Moreover, this paper shows that the proposed wavelength switching scheme offers much better network survivability after multiple wavelength failures than the existing bidirectional switching scheme can offer.