Protecting light forest in survivable WDM mesh networks with sparse light splitting

As multicast applications become popular, provisioning survivable multicast connections in wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) networks is an important issue. To reduce the network construction cost, the nodes capable of light splitting are always sparsely placed in a WDM network. In this paper, we study the problem of multicast protection in sparse splitting WDM networks, and propose an efficient protection algorithm called sparse splitting constrained multicast protection (SSMP) algorithm. Differing from previous works, the backup paths derived by SSMP can share wavelength channels with primary tree in sparse splitting WDM networks. To achieve wavelength sharing between primary tree and backup paths, a layered graph model is developed. Simulation results show that SSMP can achieve better performance in terms of average network cost and blocking probability than existing algorithms.