Traffic scheduling and grooming of optical and wireless networks

Abstract

Telecommunications networks have graduated from primarily being pure wire line networks to present day Heterogeneous Telecommunication Network (HTN). These HTNs predominantly incorporate wireless access networks integrated to high speed backbone optical networks. The wireless access networks include Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) protocols and can be incorporated in the fifth generation cellular technologies. The high data rate backbone wireline networks primarily imbibe optical fiber media and incorporate technologies like Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) and Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). Each of the above technologies has their own capabilities specific to the media of operation. Present day HTNs are an amalgamation of both the wireless and wireline technologies, and include an ensemble of present and future technologies for operation. Hence, it becomes imperative that these HTNs should be optimized to ensure that their limited network data carrying capacity be fully utilized as the user base is increasing exponentially. Further, there is an inescapable requirement to ensure classification of service in these HTNs thus; enforcing prioritization of traffic and ensuring end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) in the entire telecommunication network. This research aims to optimize both optical and wireless networks by incorporating optimum Traffic Scheduling Algorithm (TSA) in each segment of the network. A unique TSA has been conceived in this research work, which ensures classification of each connection request in the HTN. The algorithm thereafter extracts certain traffic parameters from every connection request entering the network. These traffic parameters may be the number of hops the connection request needs to traverse inside the network, data rate requested by the connection, delay tolerated by the connection request to ensure faithful reproduction of the information at the destination and finally the prioritization assigned to each connection request based on, the location of origin and destination of the connection request inside the HTN. The above extracted traffic parameters from each connection request are utilized by the TSA to assign a value of weight to each connection request. The algorithm utilizes this value of weight assigned to each connection request in the algorithm, to effectively schedule the connection requests at every node in the HTN. The incorporation of the TSA ensures prioritization of traffic and ensures QoS in the HTN. Initially, the study of pure optical networks was undertaken and the proposed TSA has been implemented in the backbone optical networks, thus ensuring optimization of this segment of HTN. Further, results obtained by implementation of TSA have been compared with the existing algorithms to prove that the proposed TSA has better performance in terms of connection blocking probability. The study of wireless networks has thereafter been undertaken in this research work to understand channel conditions in the wireless links of such networks. Channel sounding and channel measurements have been undertaken for multiple terrain types in the Indian Subcontinent. The measurement results have been proposed to be referred for designing of present and future wireless transreceivers for LTE and for future wireless networks. Study of defence network based on WMN has thereafter been undertaken to implement TSA to ensure high QoS. Finally TSA has been implemented in LTE networks and efficacy of the TSA in such networks has been adequately analyzed. By implementing TSA in each and every segment of HTN, it has been shown that the connection blocking probability and packet loss in HTN have been substantially reduced. The incorporation of TSA for both the backbone and access segments of HTN are strongly recommended to intelligently optimize the HTN, and substantially improve its performance for future deployments.