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1. INTRODUCTION
The number of critical business users which rely on transport networks is growing very
rapidly in recent years. Thus, an interruption of service for even short periods of time may
lead to disastrous consequences. Therefore, preventing service interruption, and minimizing
the loss of service, has become a problem of utmost importance and must be addressed
carefully when designing reliable telecommunication networks; particularly for optical
transport networks with very large data transfer rates. So a fault recovery system that is fast
and reliable is essential to today's networks, as it can be used to minimize the impact of the
fault on the operation of the network and the services it provides. When a fiber link fails, the
connections that use that link are automatically restored and their signals are routed to their
original destination using the protection fibers and protection switches [1]. The p-Cycle
process is fast, distributed, and autonomous. It restores the network in real time, without
relying on a central manager or a centralized database. It is also independent of the topology
and the connection state of the network at the time of the failure. The most prevalent form of
communication failures is the accidental disruption of buried telecommunication cables
[1].Clearly, the need for fast and reliable protection of services is essential in high capacity
optical systems.

One of the most interesting recent developments in survivable network architecture is
the method of p-cycles, introduced in 1998 [2].An important property of p-cycles is that the
cycles are fully preconfigured with preplanned spare capacity and when a span failure
happens, only the two end nodes of the span do any real time switching, but no switching
actions are required at any intermediate nodes of the cycles. Efficient network design using
p-cycles has been extensively investigated in the literature during the past decade [6][7].A p-
cycle is a pre- configured cycle formed out of the spare capacity in the network, which
occupies one unit of spare capacity on each on-cycle span. Like a self-healing ring, a p-cycle
provides one restoration path for every on-cycle span, it also provides two restoration paths
for every straddling span (a span that's two end nodes are on the cycle but itself is not on the
cycle).

Optically transparent switching has one challenge in survivable networking that failure
of a fiber span is not easily and quickly localized to the span at fault. In an "opaque"
network, every optical line signal is electronically processed for switching and failures are
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inherently identified within their span of origin. But in an optically transparent network, loss-
of-light will propagate along the length of the affected path. To achieve low cost, optically
transparent switching nodes typically do not have fast-acting abilities to sense and isolate
such failures. Methods are available following the failure to sectionalize the fault, but they
are generally slower than required for activation of a protection switching response. Zeng,
Huang and Vukovich [3][4], proposed a promising idea for fault localization, which takes a
distributed approach with the elegant idea of an m-cycle cover of the graph. The idea behind
m-cycles is that, if a network graph has a cycle cover in which the set of cycles covering
each span differs by at least one cycle, then, when a span fails, the span can be uniquely
identified by the combination of covering cycles which display an alarm state. This assumes
one signal monitor per cycle, which can be placed at any node on the cycle. p-Cycles, which
predate m-cycles, are similar in a structural sense, being also cycles of pre-connected spare
channels. On other points, however, m-cycles and p-cycles differ completely in their
purpose, operation, and design, as so far considered in the literature. p-Cycles operate for
span protection, assuming the failed span is known. When one of the spans on a p- cycle
fails, the cycle loops back around the body of the cycle similar to a BLSR ring. For any such
"on cycle" failure there is one protection path available per unit of spare capacity in the p-
Cycle. But when a failure span "straddles" the cycle, two protection paths are available. p-
Cycles are now a well established approach to fast and efficient survivable networking[5].

Optical networks where data traverses along light-paths without any optical-to-
electrical conversion will be increasingly prevalent in future broadband networks due to its
inherent large transmission bandwidth, lower cost and transparency to different signal
formats and protocols. However, similar to other networks, all-optical networks are also
vulnerable to failures, such as fiber cuts and transmitter/receiver breakdowns. Moreover,
there are new types of failures that are unique to all-optical networks - failures related to
subtle changes in signal power, optical signal- to-noise ratio, cross-talk, Kerr effects, or other
nonlinear effects. These failures can result in the disruption of communication, and can be
difficult to detect, localize and repair. Hence, when parts of a network are malfunctioning it
is critical to locate and identify these failures as soon as possible. At the same time, the cost
to detect and locate failures must be small to keep the network cost low. A family of efficient
fault diagnosis algorithms that exploit the unique property of all-optical WDM networks
where optical signals are not usually detected at intermediate nodes along light-paths (mostly
for cost reasons) exists. Network management and control contribute to at least half of the
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operating cost of current optical networks. All optical networks with end-to-end transparent
light-paths promise significant cost savings using optical switching at network nodes.
However, this cost saving cannot be realized unless the cost of network management is also
reduced. This cost cannot be minimized without there is a trade-off between the monitoring
of the network and its protection.

It is not initially obvious that p-cycle network design could simultaneously include m-
cycle properties without significant added cost. m-Cycles must constitute a cycle-cover, in
which only the on-cycle spans of the m-cycles are important, while p-cycles are most
efficient when they "stand-off from the working span capacities they protect, i.e. straddling
span relationships are the most preferred from an efficiency standpoint. It is therefore of
interest as a small but basic question of network science to see how these two contrasting
tendencies might be reconciled under a single design model that guarantees full span
protection and failure localization while minimizing total cost. For two spans to produce
different m-cycle alarms there must be at least one cycle that passes over one span, but not
the other. But if a cycle passes through one span in a chain, it necessarily passes through the
others. Accordingly design for full localization only in chain-free networks is considered or
designs that achieve the same maximum localization as in [3] are sought. In both cases it is
understood that dedicated span monitors can be used for the remaining intra-chain
localization problem.
Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of p-Cycles, APS process implementation and detailed
knowledge about fault detection, location and isolation and various types of optical
monitoring techniques. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of m-Cycles and analytically proves
the feasibility of m-cycle based FDL for mesh AONs. It also discusses cycle cover problem
and condition for complete fault localization and condition for p-Cycles to work as their own
m-Cycles. Chapter 4 contains and ILP model of the problem (conditions for p-Cycles to
work as their own m-Cycles). Two test networks have been simulated and their results have
been shown. Chapter 5 concludes the thesis and lists the main findings of the work done in
this thesis and also points towards some potential directions for future research on this topic.

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