Abstract

High data rates employed in transparent optical networks (TONs) demand reliable transmission between node pairs realized through different protection and restoration schemes. Besides component faults causing node or link failures, services may also be disrupted by certain malicious attacks which target the vulnerabilities of TON physical-layer components, such as high-powered jamming. The consequences of such attacks can differ significantly from component faults, so classical techniques used for protection may not necessarily guarantee survivability against them. To provide attack-aware protection in TONs, we develop a dedicated path protection algorithm in which we identify the so-called attack groups of each primary and backup path and perform RWA in a way which ensures that they are attack group-disjoint.

© 2011 Optical Society of America