Jointly Inter-Core XT and Impairment Aware Lightpath Provisioning in Elastic Optical Networks

Recently, space-division multiplexing (SDM) has been incorporated with elastic optical networks (EONs) to enhance the fiber capability, which forms space-division multiplexing-based elastic optical networks (SDM-EONs). During transmission of optical signals through multi-core fibers, inter-core crosstalk (XT) and intra-core physical layer impairments (PLIs) arise, which deteriorate the signal quality. Existing models typically handle inter-core XT and intra-core PLIs separately and set a single XT threshold for each modulation format, which results in an unacceptable lightpath due to the degradation of signal quality or leads to inefficient spectrum utilization. This paper proposes a routing, modulation, spectrum, and core allocation (RMSCA) model for SDM-EONs to consider inter-core XT and intra-core PLIs jointly. For each modulation format, it sets different XT thresholds and transmission reaches according to inter-core XT and intra-core PLIs. An optimization problem is formulated as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. We prove that the RMSCA decision problem is NP-complete. We introduce a heuristic algorithm when the ILP problem is not tractable. Numerical results demonstrate that, by setting several XT limits for each modulation format, the proposed model increases spectrum efficiency compared to a benchmark model based on the literature.

In elastic optical networks (EONs), a major obstacle to using the spectrum resources efficiently is the spectrum fragmentation. In the literature, several defragmentation approaches have been presented. For 1+1 path protection, conventional defragmentation approaches consider designated primary and backup paths. This exposes the spectrum to fragmentations induced by the primary lightpaths, which are not to be disturbed in order to achieve hitless defragmentation. This paper proposes a defragmentation scheme using path exchanging in 1+1 path protected EONs. We exchange the path function of the 1+1 protection with the primary toggling to the backup state, while the backup becomes the primary. This allows both lightpaths to be reallocated during the defragmentation process, while they work as backup, offering hitless defragmentation. Considering path exchanging, we define a static spectrum reallocation optimization problem that minimizes the spectrum fragmentation while limiting the number of path exchanging and reallocation operations. We then formulate the problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. We prove that a decision version of the defined static reallocation problem is NP-complete. We present a spectrum defragmentation process for dynamic traffic, and introduce a heuristic algorithm for the case that the ILP problem is not tractable. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional one and improves the total admissible traffic up to 10%.

This paper presents a distributed server allocation model with preventive start-time optimization against a single server failure. The presented model preventively determines the assignment of servers to users under each failure pattern to minimize the largest maximum delay among all failure patterns. We formulate the proposed model as an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. We prove the NP-completeness of the considered problem. As the number of users and that of servers increase, the size of ILP problem increases; the computation time to solve the ILP problem becomes excessively large. We develop a heuristic approach that applies simulated annealing and the ILP approach in a hybrid manner to obtain the solution. Numerical results reveal that the developed heuristic approach reduces the computation time by 26% compared to the ILP approach while increasing the largest maximum delay by just 3.4% in average. It reduces the largest maximum delay compared with the start-time optimization model; it avoids the instability caused by the unnecessary disconnection permitted by the run-time optimization model.

As millimeter wave (mmWave) technology becomes more integrated into today's communication infrastructure, its application to mobile scenarios has attracted considerable interests. In particular, mmWave technology is one of the leading candidates in Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) community to address the ever-rising data exchange demand from vehicles. However, the inherent directionality of the technology poses challenges to peer discovery and transmission scheduling in typical V2X scenarios, causing significant loss of network capacity. To mitigate this issue, we propose a novel sub-6 GHz V2X-assisted synchronous mmWave communication scheduler in this paper. The sub-6 GHz channel serves as control channel for mmWave scheduling. The scheduler carefully considers data importance and freshness in determining communication schedule, such that network utility across mmWave links is maximized. We formulate the scheduling problem into an integer linear programming (ILP) problem. However, ILP problem is NP-hard and has exponential computational complexity for the worst cases. We then develop a scheduling algorithm, maximum weight matching based iterative algorithm (MWMIA), that operates in polynomial time with performance guarantees for the NP-hard ILP, by leveraging structural properties of link conflicts. Comparative simulation studies verify the effectiveness of our scheduler against other solutions.

Data-parallel applications generate a mix of coflows with and without deadlines. Deadline coflows are mission-critical and must be completed within deadlines, while the non-deadline coflows desire to be completed as soon as possible. Scheduling such mix-coflows is an important problem in modern datacenters. However, existing solutions only focus on one of the two types of coflows: they either solely concentrate on meeting the deadlines of deadline-aware coflows or reducing the coflow completion times (CCTs) of non-deadline coflows. In this article, we study the problem of optimizing deadline and non-deadline coflows simultaneously. To this end, we present a new optimization framework, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mixCoflow</i> , to schedule deadline coflows to minimize and balance their bandwidth footprint, such that non-deadline coflows can be scheduled as early as possible. Specifically, we develop the mathematical model and formulate the scheduling problem for deadline coflows as a lexicographical min-max integer linear programming (ILP) problem. Through rigorous theoretical analysis, this ILP problem has been proved to be equivalent to a linear programming (LP) problem that can be solved with standard LP solvers. By solving this LP, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mixCoflow</i> is able to balance the bandwidth footprint of deadline coflows while guaranteeing their deadlines. As a result, non-deadline coflows can be scheduled as soon as possible whenever they arrive. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our work, we have conducted extensive simulations based on a widely used Facebook data trace. The simulation results verify that <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mixCoflow</i> can achieve significant improvement on the average CCT of non-deadline coflows, at no expense of increasing the deadline miss rates of deadline coflows, when compared to the state-of-art solutions.

This paper focus on the routing, modulation level and spectrum allocation (RMLSA) problem in the next generation datacentre networks, which own the advantages of both Elastic Optical Networks (EON) and Software Defined Networking (SDN). We proposes an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model for this problem. Simulation results show the ILP model achieves an outstanding load balancing performance.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a paradigm that virtualizes traditional network functions and instantiates Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) as software instances separate from hardware appliances. Service Chaining (SC), seen as one of the major NFV use cases, provides customized services to users by concatenating VNFs. A VNF placement model for SC that relaxes the visit order constraints of requested VNFs has been considered. Relaxing the VNF visit order constraints reduces the number of VNFs which need to be placed in the network. However, since the model does not permit any loop within an SC path, the efficiency of utilization of computation resources deteriorates in some topologies. This paper proposes a VNF placement model for SC which minimizes the cost for placing VNFs and utilizing link capacity while allowing both relaxation of VNF visit order constraints and configuration of SC paths including loops. The proposed model determines routes of requested SC paths, which can have loops, by introducing a logical layered network generated from an original physical network. This model is formulated as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem. A heuristic algorithm is introduced for the case that the ILP problem is not tractable. Simulation results show that the proposed model provides SC paths with smaller cost compared to the conventional model.

This paper addresses the fault diagnosis problem in discrete event systems using backward conflict-free Petri nets, where two different transitions have no common output places. The notion of generalized markings is employed, where the number of tokens in a place can be negative. Based on the special structures of backward conflict-free Petri nets and the generalized marking corresponding to an observed transition sequence, an integer linear programming (ILP) problem is constructed where the numbers of unknown integer variables and constraints are independent of the length of the observed transition sequence. A diagnosis algorithm is proposed by associating two different objective functions with the ILP problem and solving it. The computational efficiency of the proposed algorithm depends on the net structure only, regardless of the length of an observed transition sequence.

An accelerated Benders decomposition approach for virtual base station formation in stochastic Cloud-RANs

A deep reinforcement learning approach is applied, for the first time, to solve the routing, modulation, spectrum and core allocation (RMSCA) problem in dynamic multicore fiber elastic optical networks (MCF-EONs). To do so, a new environment - compatible with OpenAI's Gym - was designed and implemented to emulate the operation of MCF-EONs. The new environment processes the agent actions (selection of route, core and spectrum slot) by considering the network state and physical-layer-related aspects. The latter includes the available modulation formats and their reach and the inter-core crosstalk (XT), an MCF-related impairment. If the resulting quality of the signal is acceptable, the environment allocates the resources selected by the agent. After processing the agent's action, the environment is configured to give the agent a numerical reward and information about the new network state. The blocking performance of four different agents was compared through simulation to 3 baseline heuristics used in MCF-EONs. Results obtained for the NSFNet and COST239 network topologies show that the best-performing agent achieves, on average, up to a four-times decrease in blocking probability concerning the best-performing baseline heuristic methods.

Elastic optical networks (EONs) have provision long transmission reach (TR) and high spectral-efficiency (SE). Hence, compared to fixed-grid optical networks, in EONs, managing resources and addressing network design poses complex challenges. In this work, we formulate a link-based mixed integer linear program (MILP) model which considers quality of transmission (QoT) while determining the route, modulation format/level (MF/ML) and spectrum allocation (SA) for every request. To improve SE, model chooses the highest ML; however, when QoT is considered, TR of path with highest ML is very limited. Hence, model finds trade-off between ML, number of required frequency slots (FSs), and TR, with the objective of minimising required amount of network FSs so as to admit all requests. Finally, we evaluate and analyse model's performance and show that for simplicity, existing schemes impractically assume single MF (i.e., higher SE and ML) compared to fixed-grid networks, thereby ignoring the flexible nature of EONs.

In this paper, we propose a grouping-based dynamic routing, core, and spectrum allocation (RCSA) method for preventing spectrum fragmentation and inter-core crosstalk in elastic optical path networks based on multi-core fiber environments. Multi-core fibers enable us to considerably enhance the transmission capacity of optical links; however, this induces inter-core crosstalk, which degrades the quality of optical signals. We should thus avoid using the same frequency bands in adjacent cores in order to ensure high-quality communications. However, this simple strategy leads to inefficient use of frequency-spectrum resources, resulting in spectrum fragmentation and a high blocking probability for lightpath establishment. The proposed method allows one to overcome this difficulty by grouping lightpath-setup requests according to their required number of frequency slots. By assigning lightpath-setup requests belonging to the same group to cores according to their priority, the proposed method aims to suppress inter-core crosstalk. Furthermore, the proposed method is designed to mitigate spectrum fragmentation by determining the prioritized frequency bandwidth for lightpath-setup requests according to their required number of frequency slots. We show that the proposed method reduces the blocking of lightpath establishment while suppressing inter-core crosstalk through simulation experiments.

A suggested algorithm to solve triangular fuzzy rough integer linear programming (TFRILP) problems with α-level is introduced in this paper in order to find rough value optimal solutions and decision rough integer variables, where all parameters and decision variables in the constraints and the objective function are triangular fuzzy rough numbers. In real-life situations, the parameters of a linear programming problem model may not be defined precisely, because of the current market globalization and some other uncontrollable factors. In order to solve this problem, a proper methodology is adopted to solve the TFRILP problems by the slice-sum method with the branch-and-bound technique, through which two fuzzy integers linear programming (FILP) problems with triangular fuzzy interval coefficients and variables were constructed. One of these problems is an FILP problem, where all of its coefficients are the upper approximation interval and represent rather satisfactory solutions; the other is an FILP problem, where all of its coefficients are the lower approximation interval and represent completely satisfactory solutions. Moreover, α-level at α = 0.5 is adopted to find some other rough value optimal solutions and decision rough integer variables. Integer programming is used, since a lot of the linear programming problems require that the decision variables be integers. In addition, the motivation behind this study is to enable the decision makers to make the right decision considering the proposed solutions, while dealing with the uncertain and imprecise data. A flowchart is also provided to illustrate the problem-solving steps. Finally, two numerical examples are given to clarify the obtained results.

Space-division multiplexing elastic optical networks (SDM-EONs) will play an important role in addressing the increasing Internet traffic, thanks to their spectrum utilization flexibility and superior capacity. However, besides traditional physical layer impairments (PLIs), newly introduced crosstalk (XT) coupled with the unpredictability of future services makes transmission quality assurance more challenging. Therefore, it is urgent to design more intelligent and effective resource assignment (RA) algorithms in SDM-EONs. The rise of artificial intelligence provides a clear solution to such problems. This paper proposes a novel RA scheme based on dynamic unsupervised fuzzy clustering considering both XT and PLIs. All resource combinations meeting services' transmission needs will be found to form an available resources set. If the sample scale is relatively large, we will exploit fuzzy C-means clustering for higher accuracy. To reduce the costs and complexity of clustering and also obtain better clustering results, a direct clustering method will be used for a small sample scale. The resource combination most suitable for the services' transmission needs will be assigned to different levels of services. Simulation results disclose that the cluster centers present a regional distribution which is consistent with resource occupation, and it can also effectively reduce blocking probability by an average of 59.68% while greatly improving resource utilization by 12.5% on average in the measured network load range.

Integer Programming for Optimal Control of Geostationary Station Keeping of Low-Thrust Satellites