Hierarchical Protection Tree Scheme for Failure Recovery in Mesh Networks

This paper presents a novel technique for link protection in mesh networks based on the use of hierarchical trees. The hierarchical protection tree (or p-tree) provides hierarchical layering of the network. The straddling links that are not located in the tree are protected through tree branches to higher-layer Parent nodes. The links in the tree are protected by links to backup parent nodes. This scheme offers several advantages such as scalability, failure impact restriction, and distributed processing. We provide a mathematical analysis to compute performance measures for our link protection scheme, and perform restorability analysis for several real and arbitrary long haul networks to compare our scheme to other link protection proposals. Our results demonstrate the applicability of hierarchical p-tree link protection schemes in real long-haul networks.