Performance evaluation of the survivability schemes in WOBAN: a quality of recovery (QoR) method

The hybrid wireless optical broadband access network (WOBAN) is a combination of an optical backhaul and a wireless front‐end, which combine the huge amount of available bandwidth of optical networks and the ubiquity and mobility of wireless access networks with the objective of reducing their cost and complexity. Survivability is one of the most important issues in WOBAN. In this paper, the survivability schemes in WOBAN are addressed from a particular point of view of the quality of recovery (QoR) method. The QoR is a comprehensive measure to evaluate the survivability schemes in terms of availability, recovery time, redundancy, and bandwidth of backup path. The specific procedures to set up the analytical models for the survivability schemes in WOBAN are given based on the QoR concept, including abstract, normalization, and application. Besides, the weights assignment is provided to calculate the QoR value for the operators, home users, or business users with different requirements, which in turn offers the user‐perceptive quality of service. To verify the performance of the survivability schemes by the QoR method, extensive simulations are made under different WOBAN configurations. Numerical results show that for the intra‐domain survivability schemes, the wireless and optical mixed protection scheme is the best choice for failure recovery in WOBAN. The wireless scheme is the second choice for the solution, which emphasizes cost control, while for the solution that emphasizes the network performance, the 1:1 scheme is the second choice. The 1:N scheme obtains the worst QoR value as the splitter ratios increase. For the inter‐domain survivability schemes, optimizing backup optical networking units selection and backup fibers deployment scheme outperforms maximum protection with minimum cost scheme from the point of view of QoR. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.