Optical Fiber Technology 61 (2021) 102418

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Optical Fiber Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/yofte

Regular Articles

Multiple leaf-ringing based protection algorithm with spectrum

defragmentation for multicast traffic in elastic optical network
Meiling Pan , Yang Qiu *, Chuanwu Zhang
Key Laboratory of State Ethnic Affairs Commission for Electronic and Information Engineering, College of Electrical & Information Engineering, Southwest Minzu
University, Chengdu, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Elastic optical networks (EONs) have realized high-speed data transmission with attractively efficiency and
Elastic flexibility in resource utilization. In order to guarantee the reliability and increase the efficiency of the multicast
Protection transmission in EONs, we propose a multiple leaf-ringing based protection algorithm with spectrum defrag­
Multiple leaf-ring
mentation (MLRP-SD) in this article. The proposed algorithm firstly sorts the destination nodes of a multicast
Defragmentation
service into multiple groups. Then, it constructs one leaf ring for all the destination nodes in one group and two
Multicast
dedicated trunk paths (including one protection trunk path) from the source to each constructed ring. Since a leaf
ring can provide protection for the destination nodes in its corresponding group, the reliability of multicast traffic
can be improved. And the use of leaf rings can reduce the spectrum consumed in service protection compared to
the traditional dedicated path protection (DPP) algorithms. In order to further improve the efficiency, the
proposed MLRP-SD algorithm triggers spectrum defragmentation to re-optimize resource utilization in the
network when sufficient available spectrum resources cannot be found along the sought protection trunk paths.
The simulation results show that the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm can guarantee the reliability of multicast
traffic with low service blocking probability.

1. Introduction
With the continuous development of social science and technology,
the scale of the Internet and the speed of data traffic have experienced
explosive growth. In order to provide high-speed transmission, wave­
length division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks were proposed to
deliver diverse kinds of services via a fixed spectrum band (e.g. 50 GHz)
[1]. However, with limited fiber bandwidth resources and fixed spec­
trum allocation strategy, WDM systems encountered a bottleneck in
resource utilization, since they might waste spectrum resources for low-
rate services. Besides, they could hardly provide enough spectrum re­
sources in a single spectrum band for high-rate services beyond 100 Gb/
s. Therefore, elastic optical networks (EONs) have been proposed to
improve the flexibility and the utilization in source allocation by
assigning spectrum resources to diverse services adaptively according to
their respective bandwidth requirements [2,3,38–40]. EONs have
attracted widespread attention from researchers and are considered as
promising solutions to next-generation high-speed optical networks.
In order to realize the high flexibility and resource-utilization,
effective routing and spectrum assignment (RSA) algorithm is one of
the essential enabling technologies in EONs [4]. Different from the
routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithms adopted in
traditional WDM optical networks, RSA algorithms were designed to
tackle finer spectrum allocation granularity (e.g. frequency slot) in EONs
and were proved to be NP-hard problems [5]. Due to the use of fre­
quency slot (FS), RSA algorithms had to guarantee the spectrum conti­
nuity and contiguity constraints in resource allocation, which made the
design of efficient RSA algorithms more challenging. Many sophisticated
routing and spectrum-allocation strategies, such as the shortest-path
based first-fitting resource allocation mechanism [6], distance-
adaptive routing and resource allocation algorithms [7,8], and group
based spectrum allocation algorithms [9–11], have been proposed to
realize efficient RSA in EONs.
Although the above RSA algorithms succeeded in optimizing the
resource utilization in EONs, they were designed for point-to-point (a.k.
a. unicast) transmission and thus had limited efficiency in supporting
point-to-multi-point (a.k.a. multicast) transmission. This can be under­
stood from the fact that EONs inherited the transmission characteristics
from the traditional WDM networks and had few mechanisms to utilize
the resource-sharing properties of multicast transmission. However, the

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yqiu@swun.edu.cn (Y. Qiu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yofte.2020.102418
Received 18 August 2020; Received in revised form 10 November 2020; Accepted 18 November 2020
Available online 10 December 2020
1068-5200/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
M. Pan et al.
application of some novel multicast services, such as live video deliv­
ering, has made efficient multicast transmission highly desirable. And
thus many multicast-enabled RSA (MRSA) algorithms were proposed
[12–18]. In [12], two MRSA algorithms, known as the shortest-path-tree
(SPT) and the minimum-spanning-tree (MST) based MRSA algorithms
were proposed to utilizing the resource-sharing properties of the mul­
ticast transmission. In [13–15], sub-tree based MRSA algorithms were
proposed for the multicast traffic. By constructing multiple sub-trees for
one multicast service and allowing different sub-trees to select diverse
modulation formats (MFs), these sub-tree based MRSA algorithms
further increased the efficiency and the flexibility in service accommo­
dation. But, diverse MFs required in these algorithms complicated the
structure of the transponders in EONs. Besides, layered-approach [16],
resource-partition [17], and time-awareness [18] techniques were
introduced into EONs to optimize the spectrum resources allocated to
multicast services.
All these MRSA algorithms promoted the efficiency of EONs in sup­
porting multicast traffic, but they neglected the survivability of multi­
cast traffic and provided no protection mechanisms for its failure.
However, even a single failure may induce enormous data loss, espe­
cially for high-rate multicast traffic. Thus, the survivability of the mul­
ticast traffic in EONs should be considered and effective protection
mechanisms should be adopted. Many protection algorithms, such as
dedicated path protection (DPP) [19] and shared backup path protection
(SBPP) [20] were proposed to improve the survivability of traffic in
EONs. In [21], the authors compared the existence of tunable balise in
SBPP and DPP by using bandwidth compression recovery technology,
and proposed ILP formula. Besides, p-cycle protection technology was
proposed based on self-healing ring [22,23]. In [22], the authors pro­
posed an ILP model to solve the problem of p-cycle configuration.
However, seeking an effective p-cycle is an NP hard problem, and ILP
model has high computational complexity. Thus, the algorithm model in
[22] was only applicable to small-scale networks, not large-scale dy­
namic networks. In [23], a new p-cycle heuristic algorithm was pro­
posed to solve the single link failure problem considering load balance.
But the frequent setting and deletion of working path and backup path in
this algorithm might induce severe spectrum fragmentation. In [24,25],
p-cycle protection algorithms based on failure independent path were
proposed, in which the optical path could be added to the disjoint route
set of the cycle. But these p-cycle algorithms did not consider the
distance-adaptive modulation technique. This may affect their spectrum
efficiency in supporting the traffic with diverse transmission range. In
[26–28], network coding technology was adopted in designing protec­
tion algorithms for EONs. Besides the survivability issue, spectrum
fragments may also greatly affect the efficiency of the multicast traffic in
EONs, since the accumulation of spectrum fragments will exhaust the
available FSs for the subsequent multicast services and deteriorate the
networking performance of EONs [29–30]. All these decreased the
success probability of accommodating multicast services in EONs, and
thus affected the efficiency of EONs in supporting multicast traffic.
In this paper, we propose a multiple leaf-ringing based protection
algorithm with spectrum defragmentation (MLRP-SD) to reduce the
unreliability and the spectrum fragments of EONs in supporting multi­
cast services. The proposed algorithm divides the destination nodes of
the multicast service request into multiple groups, and constructs one
leaf ring for each group and two dedicated trunk paths from the source
to each constructed ring. Since a leaf ring can provide protection for the
destination nodes in its corresponding group, the reliability of multicast
traffic can be improved in EONs. Compared to the p-cycle based pro­
tection algorithms in [23–25], the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm em­
ploys distance-adaptive modulation technique to achieve higher spectral
efficiency. Besides, different from the previous p-cycle based algorithms,
the proposed algorithm employs defragmentation technique to re-
optimize resource utilization when sufficient available spectrum re­
sources cannot be found along the constructed protection trunk paths.
When compared to the protection algorithms employing network coding
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Optical Fiber Technology 61 (2021) 102418
technology as in [26–28], the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm has neither
requirements for the recovery of the lost signal nor the synchronization
at the intermediate node. The simulation results show that the proposed
MLRP-SD algorithm can increase the reliability of multicast traffic in
EONs with low service blocking probability.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the pro­
tection mechanism adopted by the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm is
illustrated. In Section III, the details of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm
are analyzed. In Section IV, the performance of the proposed MLRP-SD
algorithm is presented and investigated. Finally, Section V summarizes
this paper.
2. The protection mechanism adopted by the proposed MLRP-SD
algorithm
In order to guarantee the reliability of the multicast services in EONs,
protection mechanism is the essential technology in the proposed MLRP-
SD algorithm. We illustrate the protection mechanism adopted by the
proposed algorithm in this section. In the procedure of protecting mul­
ticast services, the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm sorts the destination
nodes of a multicast service into multiple groups, and constructs a leaf
ring for each group and two dedicated trunk paths from the source node
to each ring. Since a leaf ring can provide protection for all the nodes in
the ring and the two dedicated trunk paths can guarantee the trans­
mission from the source to the ring, the traffic of a multicast service can
be protected from its source to all of its destination nodes. Compared to
the typical dedicated path protection mechanism, the adopted leaf rings
can help reduce the spectrum resources consumed in service protection,
which can enhance the efficiency of proposed algorithm in supporting
multicast traffic.
In this section, we explain the protection mechanism of the proposed
MLRP-SD algorithm by illustrating how it constructs leaf rings and trunk
paths for a multicast service in an 8-node network. Such network to­
pology is similar to that in [30]. It is worth notice that the proposed
algorithm can only recover the traffic in a leaf ring against a single
failure, but cannot protect for more than two failures in a leaf ring.
Besides, in our illustrative example, one link is constructed by two
directional fibers to guarantee bi-directional transmission in a leaf ring.
In the illustration, the network is assumed to be composed of 12 links
with each one labeled by its distance value. For simplicity, we adopt R (s,
D, b) to represent a multicast service, where s, D, and b are its source
node, destination node set, and required data rate, respectively. Fig. 1.
illustrates the service protection of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm
when a multicast service R (A, {C, D, F, G}, b) arrives. As shown in Fig. 1
(a), the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm first divides the four destination
nodes of R into two groups: group #1 containing nodes C and D, group
#2 containing nodes F and G. Then, the proposed algorithm constructs
two leaf rings, H → C → D → H and H → F → G → H, and two trunk paths
(including one protection trunk path), A → B → H and A → H. By
comparison, traditional dedicated path protection (DPP) algorithm
constructs two dedicated light-trees, the light-tree A → H→{C, D, F, G}
and the light-tree composed of A → B → C → D and A → G → F. In Fig. 1
(c) and Fig. 1(d), when the link H → C in the ring fails, the leaf ring
realizes automatic reverse ring protection like a self-healing ring, and
protects the H → C path through the link H → D → C path. When the
trunk path A → H fails, the H → C path is protected by the dedicated
protection path A → B → H. We also assume that different amount of FSs
is assigned to R during different transmission range to emulate the
distance-adaptive modulation technique. For instance, 2 FSs are
assigned to R when the transmission distance is less than 300 m 3 FSs are
assigned to R when the transmission distance is more than 300 m but less
than 400 m. 4 FSs are assigned to R when the distance is greater than
400 m. As shown in Fig. 1(b), the traditional dedicated path protection
requires a maximum transmission distance of 550 m, and totally 40 FSs
along 10 links. By comparison, the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm only
requires a maximum transmission distance of 350 m, and totally 27 FSs
M. Pan et al.
Fig. 1. An example illustrating the service protection of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm in an 8-node network: (a) leaf-rings and trunk paths constructed by
employing the proposed algorithm, (b) dedicated light-trees (with no leaf-rings) constructed by the traditional dedicated path protection (DPP) algorithm, (c)
protection for path failure on ring, (d) protection in case of trunk path failure.
along 9 links. From the illustrative example in Fig. 1, we can conclude
that the proposed algorithm can provide protection for multicast traffic
in EONs with fewer FSs when compared to the typical DPP algorithm.
Thus, it can save spectrum resources and enhance the efficiency in
providing service protection for the multicast services in EONs.
Noticeably, in additional to the leaf ring based protection mechanism,
the proposed algorithm employs spectrum defragmentation technique to
reduce spectrum fragments and distance-adaptive modulation technique
to increase the resource-utilization efficiency in the spectrum allocation
procedure.
3. Details of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm
In this section, we investigate the details of the proposed MLRP-SD
algorithm. As analyzed above, the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm con­
structs leaf-rings and trunks paths for the grouped destination nodes of a
multicast service to guarantee its reliability. Besides, the proposed
MLRP-SD algorithm employs the typical spectrum defragmentation
mechanism as in [29] to re-optimize the usage of the FSs in the network.
Table 1 illustrates the details of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm. As
shown in Table 1, when a multicast service R(s, D, b) arrives, the pro­
posed algorithm first sorts its destination nodes set D into multiple
groups according to their shortest distance from the source node. Then
the proposed algorithm constructs a leaf ring for each destination node
group and a trunk path for source to each ring. Next, the proposed al­
gorithm checks the usage of the FSs along the constructed rings and
trunk paths to find available contiguous FSs. If there are enough avail­
able contiguous FSs are found, the proposed algorithm records the
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Optical Fiber Technology 61 (2021) 102418
information of the found FSs and constructs dedicated protection paths
for each trunk paths before checking the availability of the FSs along the
protection paths to find enough available contiguous FSs. Otherwise, the
proposed algorithm will continue to examine candidate solutions. If no
enough available FSs are found along dedicated protection paths, the
proposed algorithm triggers the spectrum defragmentation by retuning
the allocated FSs along the protection trunks for the existing multicast
services. If no enough available FSs are found after spectrum defrag­
mentation, the proposed algorithm blocks the service R(s, D, b).
Otherwise, the available FSs found along the leaf rings and the trunk
paths, as well as the FSs on the protection paths are allocated to R(s, D,
b). Note that, the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm adopts distance-
adaptive technique for a multicast service according to the distance
from its source to its farthest destination node. In this way, the spectral
efficiency of the proposed algorithm in provisioning multicast services
can be further increased. In order to make the process of the proposed
algorithm clearer, we also depict its flow chart as in Fig. 2.
The computational complexity of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm
is mainly determined by its employed path-constructing, resource-allo­
cation, and spectrum-defragmentation strategies. In the path-
constructing procedure, we adopt typical Dijkstra algorithm [12] to
compute K shortest-paths in constructing leaf rings and trunk paths for a
multicast service, and thus the complexity of the proposed MLRP-SD
consumed in path-constructing is O(K×|E|×|V|2), where |E| represents
the amount of the edges and |V| represents the amount of nodes in the
network. In the resource-allocation procedure, we employ the first-
fitting strategy [31] to seeking available resources for a multicast ser­
vice, and the time complexity of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm in
M. Pan et al. Optical Fiber Technology 61 (2021) 102418

Table 1
The details of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm.
Algorithm :MLRP-SD

1: Input: an arrived multicast service R(s, D, b)

2: Output : multicast service result
3: Pre-compute and store K shortest paths for each s-d node pair
4: Set the initial state of flag as FALSE
5 :while network is running do
6 : Divide the destination nodes into multiple groups according to their shortest
distance from the source node
7 : Each group calculates K different rings and K shortest trunk paths from the source
node to each ring
8 : for each candidate routing scheme do
9: Check the availability of the FSs along the leaf rings and the trunk path
10: if (enough available contiguous FSs are found) then
11: Record the information of the found FSs
12: flag = TURE
13: break
14: end if
15: end for
16: if (flag==TRUE) then
17: Calculate the K different dedicated protection schemes for each trunk path
18: for each candidate protection scheme do
19: Check the availability of the FSs along the protection paths
20: if (enough available contiguous FSs are found) then
21: Allocate the recorded FSs in step 11 and the found FSs along the protection
paths
22: flag = TURE
23: break
24: else
25: flag = FALSE
26: end if
27: end for
28: if (flag==FALSE) then
29: Retuning the FSs allocated on the protection trunks for the existing multicast Fig. 2. Flow chart of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm.
services
31: Repeat steps 19–27.
32: end if λ/μ, the traffic load in the simulation networks can be calculated with
33: end if the unit of Erlang as in [31]. In the generation of each multicast service,
34: if (flag==FALSE) then
its source and destination nodes are randomly selected from the network
35: Block R(s, D, b)
36: end if
nodes, with its data rate randomly selected from 100 Gb/s to 300 Gb/s.
37: end while In the MF selection, we always choose the MF with the highest spectral
efficiency for a multicast service if its maximum transmission distance
does not exceed the transmission range of the selected MF. For
resource-allocation can be calculated as O(2×|V|2 × K×|N|×|E|×Bmax), simplicity, three shortest paths are pre-computed (i.e. K equaling 3) and
where |N| denotes the total number of FSs on one edge and Bmax denotes two rings are constructed in this simulation.
the maximum number of contiguous FSs required by a multicast service. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed MLRP-SD al­
As for the spectrum defragmentation procedure, we adopt the typical gorithm, we employ two performance metrics, namely service blocking
defragmentation strategy [29] for the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm, probability and spectrum alignment rate, in the simulation. In the
and its time complexity is O(2×|N|×|E|×|S|×Bmax), where |S| is the evaluation, service blocking probability is defined as the proportion of
numbers of the accommodated multicast services. In general, the time the blocked multicast services among all the generated ones, and the
complexity of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm is polynomial. spectrum alignment rate is defined as the proportion of the aligned
vacant FSs among all the FSs.
4. Performance evaluation We compare the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm with the shortest-
path-tree based dedicated path protection (SPT-DPP) algorithm, the
In this section, numerical simulations are performed to evaluate the minimum-spanning-tree based dedicated path protection (MST-DPP)
performance of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm in two typical net­ algorithm, and the multiple leaf-ringing based protection (MLRP) al­
works, namely NSFNET (in Fig. 3(a)) and USNET (in Fig. 3(b)). In the gorithm without spectrum defragmentation in the performance evalu­
two simulation networks, we assume that each edge composes of two ation. The construction details of the multicast tree and the dedicated
directional fiber links with each link containing totally 4000 GHz. There path can be found in [12,32].
are totally 320 FSs on each fiber link when we define a spectrum band of
12.5 GHz as one FS. In the simulation, we employed distance-adaptive
modulation technique in selecting one modulation format (MF) from 4.1. NSFNET
the four typical MFs, namely BPSK, QPSK, 8QAM, and 16QAM, for one
multicast service. Noticeably, the MF selection for one multicast service Fig. 4 depicts the simulation results of the blocking performances of
depends on its transmission range as in Table 2. And such transmission the SPT-DPP, the MST-DPP, the MLRP and the proposed MLRP-SD al­
range for a multicast service is its transmission distance from its source gorithms under different traffic loads in NSFNET. It can be observed that
to its farthest leaf node. Besides, we use one FS as the guard-band in compared with the other three algorithms (i.e. the SPT-DPP, the MST-
spectrum allocation. As for the random generation of multicast services DPP, and the MLRP algorithms), the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm has
in the simulation, we adopt a Poisson traffic model with parameter λ, in a significant reduction in service blocking probability. The blocking
which their holding times are assumed to comply with a negative probability of the MLRP algorithm is always lower than the traditional
exponential distribution with parameter μ. By employing the formula SPT-DPP and MST-DPP algorithms with different traffic loads. After

4
M. Pan et al.
Fig. 3. Network topology: (a) NSFNET network; (b) USFNET network.
Table 2
Some important parameters used in the simulation.
number of frequency slots per link 320
bandwidth of one FS 12.5 GHz
guard band 12.5 GHz
Transmission-range of BPSK 9600 km
Transmission-range of QPSK 4800 km
Transmission-range of 8-QAM 2400 km
Transmission-range of 16-QAM 1200 km
employing spectrum-defragmentation strategy, such reduction is more
significant, especially under low traffic load, which enhances the
advantage of the proposed MLRP-SD on blocking performance over the
other three algorithms. For instance, when the traffic load is 80 Erlang,
the service blocking probability of the MLRP-SD algorithm is about 97%,
93% and 85% lower than the SPT-DPP algorithm, the MST-DPP algo­
rithm and the MLRP algorithm, respectively. With the increase of traffic
load, the network resources become crowded and the difference in
blocking probability decreases gradually. However, the proposed MLRP-
SD algorithm still reduces by about 63%, 56% and 42% in service
blocking probability compared to the SPT-DPP algorithm, the MST-DPP
algorithm and the MLRP algorithm respectively when the traffic load is
150 Erlang. The above comparison of blocking performance in NSFNET
network indicates that the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm can effectively
improve the efficiency of network protection and reduce the service
blocking rate through the leaf ring protection and the defragmentation
strategy. Meanwhile, we find that the proposed algorithm can greatly
Fig. 4. Blocking probability in NSFNET.
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Optical Fiber Technology 61 (2021) 102418
improve the performance under low traffic load. Even if the network
load increases, the proposed algorithm still has obvious advantages over
other three algorithms.
Fig. 5 shows the simulation results of spectrum alignment rate in
NSFNET network when SPT-DPP algorithm, MST-DPP algorithm, MLRP
algorithm and the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm are adopted. As shown
in Fig. 5, the spectrum alignment rate decreases with the increase of
traffic load, but the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm always has the highest
spectrum alignment rate in the four algorithms. The differences of the
spectrum alignment among the four algorithms are relatively small at
low traffic load, but obvious at high traffic load. For example, with the
traffic load at 60 Erlang, the spectrum alignment performance of the
proposed MLRP-SD algorithm improves by about 69%, 50% and 35%
when compared to the SPT-DPP algorithm, the MST-DPP algorithm and
the MLRP algorithm, respectively. When the traffic load increases to 160
Erlang, the spectrum alignment performance of the MLRP-SD algorithm
is about 188%, 114% and 84% higher than the SPT-DPP algorithm, the
MST-DPP algorithm and the MLRP algorithm, respectively. It is worth
noting that the spectrum alignment ratio of MLRP-SD algorithm is al­
ways higher than the other three algorithms. This can be understood by
the fact that the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm can help reduce the de­
gree of the spectrum defragmentation and improve the spectrum
alignment rate, especially under high traffic load.
4.2. USNET
Fig. 6 illustrates the simulation results of the blocking performances
M. Pan et al.
Fig. 5. Spectrum alignment rate in NSFNET.
of the SPT-DPP, the MST-DPP, the MLRP and the MLRP-SD algorithms
under different traffic loads in a larger network, USNET. Similar to that
depicted in Fig. 4, the service blocking probability of the proposed
MLRP-SD algorithm is much lower than those of the other three algo­
rithms, and the differences among their blocking performances are
especially obvious under low load. As shown in Fig. 6, when the traffic
load is 80 Erlang, the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm reduces the service
blocking probability by about 99%, 95% and 90% compared to the SPT-
DPP algorithm, the MST-DPP algorithm, and the MLRP algorithm,
respectively. When the traffic load reaches as high as 150 Erlang, the
proposed MLRP-SD algorithm can still reduce the service blocking
probability by about 70%, 61% and 43%compared to the SPT-DPP al­
gorithm, the MST-DPP algorithm, and the MLRP algorithm, respectively.
From the above results, we can conclude that the proposed MLRP-SD
algorithm outperforms the other three algorithms in service blocking
probability even in a larger network.
Fig. 7 shows the simulation results of spectrum alignment rate in a
larger network, USNET, when SPT-DPP algorithm, MST-DPP algorithm,
MLRP algorithm and the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm are adopted. As
shown in Fig. 7, the spectrum alignment rate of the proposed MLRP-SD
algorithm is higher than those of the other three algorithms, and the
differences in spectrum alignment rate among the four algorithms are
Fig. 6. Blocking probability in USNET.
6
Optical Fiber Technology 61 (2021) 102418
more obvious in USNET than that in NSFNET (as in Fig. 5), especially at
high traffic load. For example, in USNET, the spectrum alignment per­
formance of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm improves by about 72%,
52% and 25% compared to the SPT-DPP algorithm, the MST-DPP al­
gorithm and the MLRP algorithm respectively, when the traffic load is
60 Erlang. When the traffic load increases to160 Erlang, the spectrum
alignment performance of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm improves
by about 320%, 220% and 82%, compared to the SPT-DPP algorithm,
the MST-DPP algorithm and the MLRP algorithm respectively. All the
simulation results imply that the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm can
effectively improve the alignment of the spectrum resources, in a larger
network, especially with high traffic load.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we investigate the protection properties of the multi­
cast traffic in EONs, and propose a MLRP-SD algorithm to reduce the
unreliability and the generated spectrum fragments in supporting mul­
ticast services by constructing leaf-rings among their destination nodes
and triggering spectrum defragmentation if necessary. In addition,
distance-adaptive modulation technique is adopted by the proposed
MLRP-SD algorithm, which can further improve the spectral efficiency
M. Pan et al.
Fig. 7. Spectrum alignment rate in USNET.
when accommodating diverse multicast services with different trans­
mission distance. The simulation results show that the proposed MLRP-
SD algorithm can improve the reliability of multicast traffic and reduce
the service blocking probability when compared to the traditional SPT-
DPP and MST-DPP algorithms. Note that, fiber nonlinearities may
distort the performance of the proposed MLRP-SD algorithm, especially
for the high-rate long-range transmission [33]. Some nonlinear
compensation techniques can be used in future EONs, such as probabi­
listic shape constellation full-field nonlinear compensation [34], optical
phase conjugation [35], nonlinear custom detection [36], nonlinear
Fourier transform [37] to ensure the effectiveness of the proposed
MLRP-SD algorithm.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Meiling Pan: Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Data
curation, Writing - original draft. Yang Qiu: Conceptualization, Vali­
dation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Funding
acquisition. Chuanwu Zhang: Validation, Writing - original draft,
Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This work was partly supported by National Natural Science Foun­
dation of China (Nos. 61705190 and 61971378), the Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities, Southwest Minzu University
(No. 2020PTJS19004), the Fundamental project of Science and Tech­
nology Department of Sichuan Province (No.2018JY0338), and the
Graduate Innovative Research Projects (No.CX2020SZ86).We appre­
ciate the reviewers’ suggestions on the paper.
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