142

J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012

Wang et al.

Multi-Layer Simulation Design and Validation for a Two-Tier Fault-Tolerant WDM LAN
Dexiang Wang, Madhan Sivakumar, Arvindhan Kumar, Janise McNair, and Dwight Richards
AbstractIn this paper, we report our progress on the development of a simulation framework for optical local area networks, which enables a multi-layer network simulation and hence bridges the gap between the traditional signal-level and trafc-level simulators. The framework, called DRAGON (discrete-model register for Artifex-based general-purpose optical local area network simulation), is built upon the Artifex modeling platform, and it models a wide register of beroptic components, emulating features at multiple network layers, spanning over signal and noise power monitoring, bit error rate (BER) estimation, packet collision detection, and propagation/transmission delay emulation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of DRAGON by modeling a novel two-tier fault-tolerant wavelength division multiplexing local area network (WDM LAN) architecture, and we show the impact of the proposed WDM LAN architecture on the quality of service requirements of WDM trafc. Index TermsArtifex; Avionic communication; Modeling; Optical local area network; Simulation.

avoiding the limitations of optical WDM technologies, is a desirable way to consider operational conditions and functional requirements of the target network systems. Various simulation tools have been developed and applied to optical communication and networking research. In general, the simulation tools can be categorized into either signal-level (physical-layer) simulators or trafc-level (or packet-level) simulators. The former captures the physical parameters such as signal powers, amplied spontaneous emission (ASE) noise, optical crosstalk, all types of ber-optic-device-induced gains and losses, etc., using performance metrics centered on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit error rate (BER). The packet-level tools adopt abstraction at the trafc level and treat the network behaviors as a set of events corresponding to trafc generation, processing, interaction, and reception, using performance metrics such as throughput and latency. There have been many commercially available signal-level simulators for link-level or component-level simulation, such as OptSim [4], OptiSystem [5], and VPItransmissionMaker [6]. Besides, many open models have been reported in the recent literature. In [7], a wavelength-domain signal representation is introduced for multi-wavelength optical networks. A dramatic increase in execution speed is achieved by avoiding use of the computationally intensive phase-transfer functions. In [8], a chip-scale simulation model, PhoenixSim, is proposed, which incorporates features of silicon nanophotonic devices that are fundamentally different from conventional optoelectronic technologies. In [9], a physical model of 10-Gigabit Ethernet optical systems is presented that includes a model of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs). With respect to trafc-oriented simulation, a wide spectrum of simulators has been developed for both commercial and academic purposes. OBSim [10], NCTUns [11], and OBSsimulator [12] are a set of simulators for optical burst switching (OBS) research. The optical WDM network simulator OWns [13], extended from the network simulator ns2, is targeted to a switching and routing scheme study. In [14], another ns2-based simulation work is reported for admission control study in Internet protocol-generalized multiprotocol label switching (IP-GMPLS) networks. In [15], different protection schemes for WDM networks are modeled and simulated in the Artifex environment. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer simulation framework, called DRAGON (discrete-model register for Artifexbased general-purpose optical local area network simulation), which incorporates both signal-level and trafc-level features for performance study of next-generation high-speed LANs.
2012 Optical Society of America

I. I NTRODUCTION
ptical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) communication has been expanding its applications from the traditional long-haul carrier networks to many other network areas, such as WDM-based supercomputer interconnecting networks [1] and high speed local area networks (LANs) [2]. Technological advantages of optical WDM communication include high-bandwidth provision, magneto-electronic interference resistance, and a lightweight signal-carrying medium. The last one is of special interest for weight-sensitive systems such as avionic onboard communication systems [3]. However, there are also many challenges and constraints in the design of these optical networks. For example, the current optical technologies are not capable of bit-level processing and storing information purely in the optical domain. Appropriate network architecture design, which incorporates the merits while

Manuscript received October 13, 2011; revised January 10, 2012; accepted January 13, 2012; published January 31, 2012 (Doc. ID 156516). Dexiang Wang (e-mail: camelwdx@u.edu) and Janise McNair are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA. Madhan Sivakumar is with Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington 98052, USA. Arvindhan Kumar is with Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, California 92121, USA. Dwight Richards is with the Department of Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island, the City University of New York, Staten Island, New York 10314, USA. Digital Object Identier 10.1364/JOCN.4.000142

1943-0620/12/020142-10/$15.00

Wang et al.

VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW.

143

This manner of design can provide multi-angle insights into network performance at different levels of the system or architecture and dramatically improve network evaluation efciency by avoiding modeling the same architecture multiple times. The contributions of this paper are twofold:
A discrete-event-modeling-based library (DRAGON) of ber-optic components is developed that incorporates multi-layer features into one model, and hence it bridges the modeling gap between the traditional signal-level and trafc-level simulations. A novel two-tier WDM LAN architecture is proposed for next-generation avionic communication systems that addresses various quality of service (QoS) needs of prioritized trafc, and this architecture is modeled and tested using DRAGON.

Fig. 1. (Color online) Simulation software architecture.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the Artifex modeling platform. Section III describes how the multi-layer features of optical networks are characterized in Artifex. Section IV provides modeling details for the ber-optic components. In Sections V and VI, the two-tier WDM LAN case study is fully described and its Artifex model is exhibited. The simulation results are shown in Section VII. The paper is concluded in Section VIII.

ber-optic components (bers, lasers, detectors, switches, etc.) in DRAGON are modeled in object, and the details will be described in Sections III and IV. Figure 1 shows the software stack involved in constructing the simulation architecture. The discrete-event simulation engine lies at the bottom and is able to drive the simulation process after all modeling processes are completed. The Artifex graphic modeling environment provides fundamental interfaces to implement all simulation logic via associating C/C++ code to basic Petri-net elements (token, place, arc, and transition, as shown in Fig. 1). The DRAGON library uses the Artifex environment to model all ber-optic components, which nally become the building blocks for architecture-level modeling.

II. P ETRI -N ET-B ASED M ODELING P LATFORM : A RTIFEX

Artifex is a simulation platform for discrete-event systems modeling, analysis, and design [16]. It supports a graphical language, Artifex, which is based on extended Petri nets [17]. Besides the ability to model distributed and parallel systems (supported by Petri nets), the Artifex language can be integrated with standard programming languages such as C and C++. The major functional or semantic extensions on the basic symbols and notions dened in classic Petri nets, namely, place, transition, arc, and token, include the following:
Each token is associated with a data structure that is specied by the user, and the transition can read and write the data structure of the token passing through it. Each transition can be associated with a block of code, called the transitions action, which is executed every time the transition res. Usually, this is the place to implement the activities of simulated systems. The simulation time is implemented by associating two types of delay to transitions. The rst one is called a ring delay; it delays the fetch of tokens by a transition for a user-dened period of time. The second one is called a release delay; it delays the release of tokens also for a user-dened period of time. Managing complexity for large systems can be addressed by an Artifex construct called object. Object denes a functionally independent component which is composed of a group of places and transitions and is associated with a set of parameters and a user-dened interface. The

III. C APTURING M ULTI - LAYER F EATURES WDM LAN S IN A RTIFEX

OF

O PTICAL

The modeling of multi-layer features can help reveal the feasibility of proposed network architectures from different angles. In principle, the modeling should respect the nature of optical communication and capture its physical behaviors (playing important roles mostly in the physical and medium access control (MAC) layers). The physical-layer features to be considered include optical signal degradation under noise effects along the signal propagation path and delays introduced at various optical components, while the major MAC-layer consideration is packet collision in the same wavelength channel. The wavelength allocation, routing, and trafc generation patterns are the upper layer issues (or are related to protocol design) and are considered in the architecture-level implementation of the simulation model.

A. Artifex Representation of Packets

As mentioned in Section II, the tokens become the tools to represent the packets that ow around the simulated WDM networks. However, in the layered network simulation, the packets need to carry different information contingent on their

144

J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012

Wang et al.

appearance at different network layers. Therefore, two packet types are associated with the tokens, as follows:
RAW_MSG denes the logic packet that is characterized by the size, source and destination addresses, message ID, and message types (control or data). The logic packet is represented by one token of type RAW_MSG. WDM_OPT_MSG encapsulates the above logic packet into a physical packet that incorporates all the necessary parameters to characterize the packets physical attributes: wavelength, signal power, noise power, extinction ratio, data rate, etc. The physical packet is represented by two tokens (called the head token and the tail token) of type WDM_OPT_MSG, which are generated at the times the rst bit of the packet is pumped into the network and right after the packets last bit is released to the network, respectively.

FIBER_IN:WDM_OPT_MSG

TEMP1:WDM_OPT_MSG

FIBER_OUT:WDM_OPT_MSG

COLLISION_DETECT

SIGNAL_DEGRADE_DELAY

Fig. 2. Optical ber.

B. Delay Introduced by Optical Components

In light of the packet representation described above, all types of delay can be associated to a specic packet (token) by leveraging two types of Artifex delay, ring delay and release delay (as mentioned in Section II). For example, the optical signal propagation delay (d P in seconds) along bers can be modeled as the release delay calculated based on the ber length (L F in meters) and signal propagation speed (or per-meter delay D F in seconds/meter). It can be expressed as dP = DF L F . (1)

Fig. 3. Pseudocode of the collision detection algorithm.

IV. M ODELING F IBER -O PTIC C OMPONENTS

The ber-optic components registered in DRAGON are modeled into independent Artifex classes. They are embodied when a real object is created and deployed into the simulated network architecture. In the interest of space, only key ber-optic components are described.

Similarly, the transmission and reception times are regulated to be the time difference between the generation of the head token and the tail token, which depend on the packet size (l P in bits) and the laser operation speed (r Bit in bits/second). Let t D (in seconds) represent this time difference between the head and tail tokens. Then it can be expressed as tD = lP . r Bit (2)

A. Optical Fiber
As shown in Fig. 2, the optical ber captures three key features. Collision detection is implemented via the action of transition COLLISION_DETECT. Signal degradation occurs in the action of transition SIGNAL_DEGRADE_DELAY. Propagation delay is implemented using the release delay associated with the same transition. The head and tail tokens (WDM_OPT_MSG) enter the bers input port FIBER_IN, then travel through the two transitions, and nally leave the ber at its output port FIBER_OUT with collision indicators and physical parameters (such as signal power and noise power) being set up accordingly. The collision detection algorithm is listed in Fig. 3. The ber object maintains a buffer for each wavelength channel that keeps tracking the ongoing packets (tokens). A packet is registered into the buffer when its head token comes to the transition COLLISION_DETECT and is deregistered from the buffer when its tail token comes to the same transition. If (1) there are no other registered packets at the time when the packets head token comes to the transition, and (2) there is no head token of later packets coming to the transition before the tail token of the current packet comes, then the packets collision indicator remains what it is. Otherwise, its collision indicator is set to COLLIDED. The propagation delay of the packet is calculated according to Eq. (1). The signal power (i = S) and the noise power (i = N)

C. Packet Collision in the Same Wavelength Channel

Since a collision must happen in the same wavelength channel of the same ber link, we capture collisions in modeling optical bers, using the packets physical representation. The collision is identied when the two packets overlap each other both in time and in space, which corresponds to the fact that the head token of the later packet coming into the ber channel precedes the tail token of the earlier packet coming into the same ber channel.

D. Optical Signal Degradation in Presence of Noise

The purpose of modeling signal-level features of WDM LANs is to validate the resulting BER at the reception end, based on the architectural deployment of ber-optic components. The signal power and noise power are updated after the packet travels through an optical component along its communication path, and the BER will be nally computed at the end photonic detector (receiver).

Wang et al.

VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW.

145

HEAD_GEN:WDM_OPT_MSG HEAD_DELAY
AMPLIFIER_IN:WDM_OPT_MSG

LASER_IN:RAW_MSG

LASER_OUT:WDM_OPT_MSG

AMPLIFY_CTRL

AMPLIFIER_OUT:WDM_OPT_MSG

GENERATE_RHY_INFO TAIL_GEN:WDM_OPT_MSG TAIL_DELAY

Fig. 6. Optical amplier. Fig. 4. Optical laser.

DETECTOR_IN:WDM_OPT_MSG TEMP1:WDM_OPT_MSG TEMP2:WDM_OPT_MSG TEMP3:WDM_OPT_MSG

WAVELENGTH_CHECK, 1 FILTERED_OUT

PICKUP_TAIL,1 HEAD_SINK

BANDWIDTH_CHECK, 1 OUT_OF_BANDWIDTH BER_CALCULATION

DETECTOR_OUT:RAW_MSG

BER_OUT BER

N PIn are the signal and noise powers received. Equations (5)(9) show the process of approximate BER calculation: S S (1 r ex )RPIn (1 r ex )RPIn I1 I0 = , 2 + 2 + 2 )1/2 + 1 + 0 1 + 0 (T T I S 4k B T f F n 4k B T r Bit F n , 2 = T RL RL S S 2 2e RPIn f 2e RPIn r Bit , S

and after that a logical packet is released, through the output port DETECTOR_OUT, to the upper layers of the network protocol stack. The BER calculation considers the received signal power and three noise parts: received optical noise, shot S noise, and thermal noise at the detector. Assume that PIn and

Q=
Fig. 5. (Color online) Optical detector.

(5)

(6) (7) (8)

are degraded as follows:

i i POut = PIn
L F 10 10

(3) and BER =

N 2 RPIn I

S N where PIn or PIn (in mW) represents the signal or noise power S N of the packet before entering the ber, POut or POut represents the signal or noise power of the packet after leaving the ber, D represents the ber attenuation ratio (in dB/m), and L F is the length of the ber (in m).

exp Q 2 /2 Q 1 erfc , 2 Q 2 2

(9)

B. Laser
An optical laser converts logic packets into optical signals. In the Artifex model, as shown in Fig. 4, it rst takes the logic packet (one token of type RAW_MSG) coming to its input port LASER_IN. Then the logical packet is converted into a physical packet (two tokens of type WDM_OPT_MSG released from transition GENERATE_PHY_INFO). The physical parameters (wavelength index, signal power, noise power, extinction ratio, data rate, etc.) are calculated and associated to the physical packet. Finally, the physical packet is released at the lasers output port LASER_OUT with its tail token being delayed by a transmission duration calculated by Eq. (2). The noise N power (PLaser ) is calculated in accordance with the following equation:
N S PLaser = PLaser

where I 1 and I 0 are average current levels for bits 1 and 0, respectively; 2 and 2 are the corresponding variances 1 0 caused by the combination of the thermal, shot, and received optical noise (2 , 2 , and 2 ); r ex is the extinction ratio of T I S the off-state and on-state optical powers; R (in A/W) is the responsivity of the optical detector; k B is the Boltzmann constant (1.38 1023 J/K); T is the absolute temperature (in K); r Bit is the bit rate and the approximation of the signal bandwidth f ; F n is the noise gure at the detector; R L is the receiver load resistance (in ); and e is the elementary charge of an individual electron (1.6 1019 Coulombs).

D. Optical Amplier, Coupler, Splitter, and Filter

The optical amplier, as modeled in Fig. 6, amplies incident light through stimulated emission. Additional noise is created S along the amplication process. The output signal power POut

f 10

RIN 10

S PLaser

r Bit 10

RIN 10

, (4)

N and noise power POut are calculated via Eqs. (10)(12) (G is the gain of the amplier): S N SNRIn PIn /PIn = , Fn Fn

S where PLaser is the laser output power (in W), f is the signal bandwidth (in Hz), approximated by the laser operation rate r Bit (bit rate, in bps), and RIN is the lasers relative intensity noise (in dB/Hz).

SNROut =
S POut =

(10) (11)

C. Optical Detector
and The optical detector converts the optical signal back to logical packets. The Artifex model of the optical detector is shown in Fig. 5. It takes the physical packet (head and tail tokens from the input port DETECTOR_IN) and sinks the head token of the packet. Then the physical parameters associated with the tail token are used to calculate the BER
N POut =

SNROut S N G PIn + PIn , 1 + SNROut

1 S N G PIn + PIn . 1 + SNROut

(12)

Fiber-optic couplers, as modeled in Fig. 7, combine two or more input signals into one output signal, while ber-optic

146

J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012

Wang et al.

WAVELENGTH_CHECK1, 16

DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT1:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT2:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT3:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT4:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT5:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT6:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT7:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT8:Y

COUPLER_IN1:WDM_OPT_MSG

INSERTION_LOSS1
WAVELENGTH_CHECK2, 15 WAVELENGTH_CHECK3, 14

COUPLER_OUT1:WDM_OPT_MSG
WAVELENGTH_CHECK4, 13

COUPLER_IN2:WDM_OPT_MSG

INSERTION_LOSS2
WAVELENGTH_CHECK5, 12 WAVELENGTH_CHECK6, 11 WAVELENGTH_CHECK7, 10 MULTIPLEXER_IN:WDM_OPT_MSG TEMP:WDM_OPT_MSG WAVELENGTH_CHECK8, 9 WAVELENGTH_CHECK9, 8 WAVELENGTH_CHECK10, 7 WAVELENGTH_CHECK11, 6
DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT10:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT11:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT12:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT13:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT14:Y

Fig. 7. Symmetric 2 1 coupler.

SPLITTER_OUT1:WDM_OPT_MSG

SIGNAL_PROCESS

WAVELENGTH_CHECK12, 5

SPLITTER_IN:WDM_OPT_MSG

SPLIT

WAVELENGTH_CHECK13, 4 WAVELENGTH_CHECK14, 3

SPLITTER_OUT2:WDM_OPT_MSG

WAVELENGTH_CHECK15, 2 WAVELENGTH_CHECK16, 1

DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT15:Y DEMULTIPLEXER_OUT16:Y

FILTER_OUT

Fig. 8. Symmetric 1 2 splitter.

MULTIPLEXER_IN1:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN2:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN3:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN4:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN5:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN6:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN7:WDM_OPT_MSG
FILTERED_OUT

WAVELENGTH_CHECK1, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK2, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK3, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK4, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK5, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK6, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK7, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK8, 1 SIGNAL_PROCESS MULTIPLEXER_O TEMP:WDM_OPT_MSG WAVELENGTH_CHECK9, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK10, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK11, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK12, 1

Fig. 10. (Color online) Wavelength division demultiplexer (1 16).

CONTROL:SWITCH_CTRL

SWITCH_TUNNING_DELAY

IN1:WDM_OPT_MSG TIMING_CHECK1, 1

TEMP1:WDM_OPT_MSG SWITCH_CTRL1, 1 OUT1:WDM_OPT_MSG

MULTIPLEXER_IN8:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN9:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN10:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN11:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN12:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN13:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN14:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN15:WDM_OPT_MSG MULTIPLEXER_IN16:WDM_OPT_MSG

SWITCH_CTRL2 DROPPED1

IN2:WDM_OPT_MSG TIMING_CHECK2, 1
WAVELENGTH_CHECK13, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK14, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK15, 1 WAVELENGTH_CHECK16, 1

TEMP2:WDM_OPT_MSG

SWITCH_CTRL3 SWITCH_CTRL4, 1

OUT2:WDM_OPT_MSG

DROPPED2

Fig. 9. (Color online) Wavelength division multiplexer (16 1).

Fig. 11. 2 2 dynamic optical switch.

splitters, as modeled in Fig. 8, divide one input signal into two or more output signals. Both the signal power (i = S) and noise power (i = N) experience insertion loss (represented by IL in dB), and they are calculated as follows:
i i POut = PIn 10 10 .
IL

V. C ASE S TUDY: C ONSTRUCTING A T WO -T IER FAULT-T OLERANT WDM LAN S UPPORTING P RIORITIZED T RAFFIC
One of the latest applications of WDM LANs is for avionic onboard communication systems [3]. Traditionally, such systems are implemented via electrical communication technologies. The signal carriers are copper wires, which are heavy in weight and limited in bandwidth compared with optical bers. In addition, ber-optic communication is in nature immune to electromagnetic interference. These technological merits make the WDM LAN a promising candidate for next-generation avionic communication systems, which are facing fast-growing demands in sensing, control, and multimedia communications. However, ber-optic components have more stability issues than electrical components, especially under hazardous environments. This leads to the need for fault tolerance support. Besides, future avionic WDM networks are expected to accommodate prioritized trafc due to various time-critical requirements. For example, the engine control or missile launch commands should be offered a high priority, whereas general multimedia trafc can be supported at a lower priority. The prioritization can be dened in terms of QoS specications. We classify all possible trafc into three priority categories: high, medium, and low. The QoS specications are characterized in Table I. Since the interest in applying optical communication technologies into avionic onboard systems started to arise

(13)

E. Wavelength Division Multiplexer/Demultiplexer

A wavelength division multiplexer (MUX) takes individual optical signals on distinct wavelengths and combines them onto a single output port. A wavelength division demultiplexer (DEMUX) functions the reverse, separating the wavelengthmultiplexed signal into individual wavelength output ports. Figures 9 and 10 show the Artifex models for the 16 1 MUX and 1 16 DEMUX.

F. Optical Switch
An optical switch can switch the input signal arbitrarily to one of its output ports. A 2 2 optical switch model is shown in Fig. 11. The electronically controlled switching logic (implemented via the CONTROL port and the predicates of transitions SWITCH_CTRL1 and SWITCH_CTRL4) regulates the direction of packet delivery. In general, there is a tuning delay associated with the optical switch for it to stabilize in the new switch state. The packets received before it is stabilized are dropped.

Wang et al.

VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW.

147

TABLE I B ACKBONE Q O S C HARACTERISTICS L EVELS

Priority High Transmission latency Fault tolerance Negligible

FOR

T HREE P RIORITY

11

12

13

14

Failure recovery Instantaneous Noticeable response time No requirement

21

22

23

24

Medium Noticeable delay Low Large delay allowed

3 one-hop backbone connectiona failures 3 unidirectional backbone link failures No requirement

31

32

33

34

41

42

43

44

Notes. a A one-hop connection consists of two unidirectional links running in opposite directions.

only very recently, there are not many architecture proposals that have yet been presented in the literature. The most comprehensive architecture evaluation is presented in [18], where several potential candidate architectures (including the ringring, optical tree, hybrid opticalelectrical network, and optical Clos network) are listed. However, those architectures are more or less borrowed from those for transport networks or high-performance parallel computing systems. Besides, most of them are of very low fault tolerance capability and none of them offers architectural support on trafc prioritization. In this work, a two-tier network design is applied. The top tier forms a WDM backbone consisting of a group of backbone controllers. The bottom tier works for individual subsystems (e.g., engine control, wing sensing and control, cockpit, tail, etc.), while the inter-subsystem communications are via the top-tier backbone network. The tiered design provides domain isolation between the backbone and the subsystems. The wavelength demand on the backbone gets relaxed since the backbone controllers are usually limited to a small number. Another advantage of tiered design is that the subsystem network design can be different from the backbone in terms of topology, protocol, architecture, and even the choice of communication technology.

Fig. 12. (Color online) A 4 4 torus backbone connected via optical bers.

11

12

13

14

11

12

13

14

21

22

23

24

21

22

23

24

31

32

33

34

31

32

33

34

41

42

43

44

41

42

43

44

(a) Intra-ring protective routing

(b) Inter-ring protective routing

Fig. 13. (Color online) M&L priority protective routing.

A. Backbone Network Design (Top-Tier Network)

The physical topology choice for the backbone design goes to a two-dimensional torus due to its structural symmetry, rich connectivity, and ease of routing. As shown in Fig. 12, the selected network size corresponds to a 4 4 torus that can support 16 backbone controllers. The controllers are interconnected via two unidirectional ber links running in parallel to enable bidirectional communications.

large wavelength resources. This is because the optical communication domain is expanded along the lightpaths and dedicated wavelengths have to be assigned along the lightpaths. In order to lower this cost, we limit the optical domain to a substructure of the torus (a ring) for the M&L priority trafc. In such a way, the wavelength resources in different optical domains (rings) can be reused without conict. As a result, the inter-domain trafc has to take two logic hops to reach destinations and experiences one intermediate queueing delay. The wavelengths are assigned based on the senders within each ring. Each sender is equipped with one laser xed on a unique wavelength. Whenever there is a data delivery request, the sender immediately sends the data on its wavelength. All other controllers on the ring listen to the transmission by tapping a portion of the signal and decide if they are the right receiver by parsing the destination addresses. The fault tolerance is implemented via intra-domain and inter-domain protections. At the ring level, since there are two unidirectional ber links connecting neighboring controllers, two opposite transmission directions (working direction and standby direction) can be offered. At the torus level, protective routing is developed for both intra-ring trafc and inter-ring trafc (as shown in Fig. 13). The combination of intra-domain and inter-domain protections can offer four unidirectional communication paths. Thus, three arbitrary unidirectional ber link failures can be tolerated. The QoS difference between the medium and low priority trafc is achieved by differential service (DiffServ), which always serves the medium priority trafc prior to the low priority trafc in order to grant the former lower transmission

1) High Priority Trafc: For high priority trafc, lightpathbased communication is applied for its intermediate-queueingfree delivery and elimination of opticalelectricaloptical (OEO) conversions. The fault tolerance requirement is satised by applying the results of our previous work, optimal 4-way link-disjoint routing on a torus [2], to create redundant lightpaths. Three arbitrary one-hop connection failures can be tolerated. Since the destination only needs to switch its reception direction upon a failure, the failure recovery is almost instantaneous.

2) Medium and Low (M&L) Priority Trafc: Although lightpath communication is extremely fast, it usually demands

148

J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012

Wang et al.

Ring 2 2 3 4 Connecting left side neighboring subsystem 1

Connecting upside neighboring subsystem 16 15 14 Connecting right side neighboring subsystem

5

1 13

11
9

12

13

14

Ring 1

21

22

23

24

Ctrl

13

6 7 8 10 9 11

12

31

32

33

34

41

42

43

44

Connecting downside neighboring subsystem

Fig. 14. (Color online) The wheel architecture for the subsystem network.

Fig. 15. (Color online) Bottom-tier torus interconnections.

latency. In addition, since no fault tolerance is required for the low priority trafc, it is simply dumped upon failures and the protective bandwidth is saved for the medium priority trafc.

3) Fault Tolerance Implementation:

a) Fault Detection. We apply a Hello mechanism to detect physical link failures. One dedicated wavelength is allocated to carry the Hello and Hello Ack messages due to their criticality. The Hello message is sent out every 100 ns between each neighboring controller pair, and failure to receive a Hello message after 300 ns triggers the controller to broadcast a link status notication (LSN) message. Upon reception of the LSN message, each backbone controller updates its link status table and, based on the updated link status, fault recovery is then performed. b) Fault Recovery. For the high priority trafc, the receiving controller checks if the link failure affects the working paths and makes switch decisions among redundant paths accordingly. For the M&L priority trafc: (1) at the ring level, all affected controllers switch their transmission to their standby directions; (2) at the torus level, the source and intermediate controllers make their fault-tolerant routing decisions based on the protective routing schemes (as shown in Fig. 13).

M&L priority trafc is carried through the rim architecture. In contrast to the wavelength assignment scheme applied for the M&L trafc on the backbone ring, we assign wavelengths based on the receiving nodes and apply optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) to assign the wavelength channels [19]. Once a time slot for a specic receiving node arrives, the sending node tunes its laser to the receiving nodes wavelength and sends the data.

2) Fault Tolerance: We focus the bottom-tier fault tolerance

design primarily on the backbone controller failure due to its signicant impact on inter-subsystem communications. We strongly assume that the failure would block all communications on spoke connections. Besides, we also consider link failures on the rim in two reverse directions. The fault detection is still based on the Hello mechanism, but it is implemented differently for the backbone controller failures and for the rim link failures. The backbone controller failure is detected via monitoring the Hello handshakes over the spoke connections. The rim link failure is detected in a wavelength-efcient way in which the Hello message is sent by each node on its own wavelength by taking one extra time slot at the end of the OTDM frame cycle. Physically, the Hello message travels through the whole rim, and nally it is received by the sending node. Hence, failure to receive this message indicates that some fault happens to the rim structure. This design has no need to assign extra wavelength channels. The only cost is the extra time slot for the Hello message, which, however, can be very short. With respect to fault recovery, since a failure to the backbone controllers, by assumption, will block all the inter-subsystem trafc, we propose a bottom-tier torus design to interconnect all the subsystems in a way similar to the backbone topology, as shown in Fig. 15. The rim nodes responsible for direct inter-subsystem connection are named outlet nodes, as indicated by nodes 1, 5, 9, and 13 in Fig. 14. Upon a backbone controller failure, the inter-subsystem trafc will nd the nearest outlet node, through the rim connection, to escape. Then the backbone controller of the neighboring subsystem takes charge of routing the trafc to its destination subsystem. Note that, due to potential lack of established lightpaths for the rerouted trafc at the neighboring backbone controller,

B. Subsystem Network Design (Bottom-Tier Network) 1) Architecture and Prioritization Implementation: The bottom-tier network architecture, as shown in Fig. 14, applies a wheel topology. This wheel architecture is further decomposed to a rim and a star (a group of spokes). The 16 bottom-tier nodes in a subsystem network are arranged circularly along the ring, and they are all connected to the backbone controller through the spoke connections.
The inter-subsystem trafc is rst sent to the backbone controller through the spoke connection. Then, based on its priority, the trafc is delivered through the high priority or the M&L priority backbone architecture accordingly. For the intra-subsystem communication, the high priority trafc still uses the direct spoke connection for fast delivery. However, in order to save the bandwidth on the spoke connections, the

Wang et al.

VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW.

149

Bottom-tier torus fiber connection (bidirectional)

13

Bottom-tier rim fiber connection (bidirectional)

4 5

Ring 2 2 3 1 Ring 1 16 15 14

ctrl

Top-tier (backbone) torus fiber connection (bidirectional) Bottom-tier spoke fiber connection (bidirectional)

Ctrl

13

6 7 8 10 9 11

12

Outlet node

11

12

13

14

Regular secondtier node

21

22

23

24

31

32

33

34

Simulation time monitor

41

42

43

44

Fig. 18. (Color online) Modeling the bottom-tier architecture (wheel). Fig. 16. (Color online) Top-tier and bottom-tier torus modeling.
Data sink Optical detector array OTDM scheduling /fault-tolerance on rim direction 2 OTDM scheduling /fault-tolerance on rim direction 1

MUX Laser array Coupler array

DEMUX

Drop switch array

Routing switch array

Data source

Outlet connection and traffic forwarding

Inter-subsystem traffic processing and backbone controller fault detection

Fig. 19. (Color online) Modeling outlet node structure and protocols. Fig. 17. logic. (Color online) Modeling high priority backbone switching

the high priority trafc is subject to being forwarded through the M&L priority architecture and latency degradation. The failure in the bottom-tier rim links can be tolerated by switching the transmission to the backup direction.

rim/spoke connections. The modeling details of the outlet nodes are shown in Fig. 19; there are two rim-associated processing modules (for two transmission directions), one spoke-connection-associated processing module, and one outlet-connection-associated processing module.

VI. M ODELING

THE

T WO -T IER WDM LAN

VII. S IMULATION R ESULTS

In this section, we provide some sample simulation results for the proposed two-tier WDM LAN. The metrics applied include the BER, packet latency, and network throughput for all three types of trafc priority. The fault tolerance performance is evaluated by adding various numbers of network faults. In order to gain insights into the separate performance of the top-tier and bottom-tier architectures, we rst focus on testing the backbone network and then incorporate the bottom-tier architecture into the simulation.

We apply DRAGON to fully model the proposed two-tier fault-tolerant avionic WDM LAN. The ber-optic components, as described in Section IV, are functionally integrated into different architectural units. In the interest of space, only several key architectural units are exhibited to show how the proposed architecture is modeled.

A. Top-Tier (Backbone) Modeling

Figure 16 shows the top-level view of the proposed torus-based two-tier WDM LAN architecture, which includes both top-tier torus and bottom-tier torus connections. Figure 17 shows the high priority part of the backbone controller model that fullls the lightpath add/switch/drop functionalities.

A. Simulation Setup
The backbone network is sized as a 4 4 torus. Three data trafc patterns (periodic, Poisson/random, bursty) are generated to trigger the simulation. The generated packets have a size 1000 bytes, and the optical lasers are operated at the transmission rate of 1 Gbps. All ber links are dened with a length of 100 m, and the light propagation speed in the bers is assumed to be 2 108 m/s.

B. Bottom-Tier (Subsystem) Modeling

Figure 18 shows the modeled bottom-tier architecture, which is composed of the regular and outlet nodes, and

150

J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012

200000 180000 160000 Packet latency (ns) 140000 120000 100000 80000 60000 40000 20000 0

Wang et al.

0.01 1E-06 1E-10 Bit-error rate (BER) 1E-14 1E-18 1E-22 1E-26 1E-30 1E-34 1E-38 1E-42 1E-46 1E-50 0.1 1 Laser output power (W) 10 1-hop 2-hops 3-hops 4-hops 5-hops

Low (inter-domain) Low (intra-domain)

Medium (inter-domain) Medium (intra-domain)

Fig. 21. (Color online) Average packet latency for M&L priority trafc. Fig. 20. (Color online) BER curves for high priority light paths of different lengths.
High priority periodic Medium priority periodic Low priority periodic High priority Poisson Medium priority Poisson Low priority Poisson High priority bursty Medium priority bursty Low priority bursty

B. Bit Error Rate (BER)

Among all types of optical-domain communication, the top-tier high priority communication penetrates through the longest path and involves the most ber-optic components (lasers, bers, MUX/DEMUX, all-optical switches, couplers, detectors, etc.). Therefore, we focus BER evaluation on the high priority architecture. Figure 20 shows the BER trends with the laser output power for varied lightpath lengths. The gaps between different BER curves reect the communication quality degradation caused by going through additional intermediate switching controllers.
Packet latency (ns)

5000000

500000

50000

5000 0 1 2 3 Number of link failures 4

Fig. 22. (Color online) Average latency changes upon occurrence of faults.

C. Top-Tier Results 1) Fault-Free Average Packet Latency: For the high priority trafc, due to the nature of lightpath communication, the latency reduces to the source queueing, transmission, and propagation delays. For M&L priority trafc, there exists inter-domain communication and interaction between the medium and low priority trafc. Figure 21 shows the latency for M&L trafc. In the simulation, we uniformly feed medium and low priority trafc of the same intensity. The latency of intra-domain communications roughly stays half of that of inter-domain communications before the network reaches the rst saturating point (at around 1250 Mbps). After that, the low priority trafc starts being blocked. However, the medium priority trafc can still be managed with reasonable latency degradation until the network reaches the second saturating point (at around 2500 Mbps), where the bandwidth of the M&L network architecture has been fully occupied. 2) Pair-Wise Packet Latency Under Network Faults: The
network response to the faults can be tested by measuring the packet latency and network throughput changes. Figure 22 shows how the average latency is affected by a series of critical link faults taking place on the connection between controller 11 and controller 12. A trafc load of 500 Mbps for each of three priorities is applied. First, Poisson and bursty trafc lead to larger average packet latency due to their irregular arrival patterns. Second, both high and medium priority trafc can survive over three critical cuts without loss of connection. Third, the medium priority trafc experiences increased latency after the second critical link cut because its delivery becomes through the protective route. Meanwhile, the

low priority trafc is blocked due to its bandwidth concession to the medium priority trafc.

3) Network Throughput Under Network Faults: The impact of network faults on the high priority throughput is analytically evaluated in [2]. For the M&L priority trafc, we identify two extreme (worst-case and best-case) scenarios to recognize the upper and lower bounds of the throughput degradation. The best-case scenario happens in a distributed fashion in which the rst eight faults are introduced to eight working rings and then the next eight faults occur in the remaining eight standby rings. The worst-case scenario happens in a locally isolating fashion in which the four diagonal controllers in the 4 4 torus structure get isolated consecutively from the backbone by breaking their four outgoing links. The throughput changes corresponding to these two extreme scenarios can be observed in Fig. 23. It is observed that the low priority throughput is affected after two critical faults because no inter-domain protective routing is provided for the low priority trafc. D. Bottom-Tier Results
For the bottom-tier simulation, we are especially interested in evaluating the interaction between the high priority trafc and M&L priority trafc after the backbone controller fails, since they may share bandwidth due to lack of assigned lightpaths sourced at the forwarding backbone controller. Seven subsystems (named cockpit, engine, wing I, wing II, tail, weapon I, and weapon II) are identied from a military trafc conguration. The simulation is performed both free of network faults and under the backbone controller failure at wing I. Three priority trafc loads are added simultaneously

125 250 375 500 625 750 875 1000 1125 1250 1375 1500 1625 1750 1875 2000 2125 2250 2375 2500 Offered traffic load at each controller (Mbps)

Wang et al.

VOL. 4, NO. 2/FEBRUARY 2012/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW.

151

25 Network throughput (Gbps) 20 15 10 5 0 0 1 2

Overall (best case) Medium (best case) Low (best case)

Overall (worst case) Medium (worst case) Low (worst case)

Fiber Optic Engineers Conf. (OFC/NFOEC), 2125 Mar. 2010, JWA62. [2] D. Wang and J. Y. McNair, A torus-based 4-way fault-tolerant backbone network architecture for avionic WDM LANs, J. Opt. Commun. Netw., vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 335346, Apr. 2011. [3] S. F. Habiby and R. Vaidyanathan, WDM optical backbone networks in aircraft applications: Networking challenges and standards progress, in IEEE Military Communications Conf. (MILCOM) 2009, 1821 Oct. 2009, pp. 16.

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Number of link failures

Fig. 23. (Color online) Throughput of M&L priority trafc under network faults.
2000 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200
0

[4] G. Boggio, M. Burzio, N. Portinaro, J. Cai, I. Cerutti, A. Fumagalli, M. Tacca, L. Valcarenghi, A. Carena, and R. Gaudino, Network designerArtifexOptSim: a suite of integrated software tools for synthesis and analysis of high speed networks, Opt. Networks Mag., vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 2741, Sept./Oct. 2001. [5] Optiwave Systems Inc., OptiSystem [Online]. Available: http:// www.optiwave.com/. [6] VPIphotonics, VPItransmissionMaker Optical Systems [Online]. Available: http://www.vpiphotonics.com/TMOpticalSystems.php. [7] I. Roudas, N. Antoniades, D. H. Richards, R. E. Wagner, J. L. Jackel, S. F. Habiby, T. E. Stern, and A. E. Elrefaie, Wavelength-domain simulation of multiwavelength optical networks, IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 348362, Mar./Apr. 2000. [8] J. Chan, G. Hendry, A. Biberman, K. Bergman, and L. P. Carloni, PhoenixSim: A simulator for physical-layer analysis of chip-scale photonic interconnection networks, in Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conf. & Exhibition (DATE), 812 Mar. 2010, pp. 691696. [9] A. Gholami, D. Molin, and P. Sillard, Physical modeling of 10 GbE optical communication systems, J. Lightwave Technol., vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 115123, Jan. 2011. [10] J. J. P. C. Rodrigues, N. M. Garcia, M. M. Freire, and P. Lorenz, Object-oriented modeling and simulation of optical burst switching networks, in IEEE Global Telecommunications Conf. Workshops, 29 Nov.3 Dec. 2004, pp. 288292. [11] M. C. Yu, H. J. Tsai, C. Y. Huang, and S. Y. Wang, Supporting optical network simulations (OBS) on the NCTUns network simulator and emulator, NCTU Tech. Rep., National Chiao Tung University, 2004, pp. 1106. [12] J. Teng and G. N. Rouskas, A detailed analysis and performance comparison of wavelength reservation schemes for optical burst switched networks, Photonic Network Commun., vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 311335, May 2005. [13] B. Wen, N. M. Bhide, R. K. Shenai, and K. M. Sivalingam, Optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network simulator (OWns): Architecture and performance studies, Opt. Networks Mag., vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 1626, Sept./Oct. 2001. [14] N. M. Din and N. Fisal, Modeling of IP-GMPLS multimedia trafc and network for admission control using ns-2, in Second Asia Int. Conf. on Modeling & Simulation (AICMS), 1315 May 2008, pp. 678683. [15] M. Baldassari, R. Benso, and R. Pane, Modeling WDM protocols and networks using the Artifex environment, in Photonics East99 Proc.Technical Session: All-Optical Networking: Architecture, Control, and Management Issues 1999 (VV04), pp. 112. [16] ARTIS Software Corporation, Artifex User Manual, 2001, pp. 1342. [17] J. L. Peterson, Petri Nets, ACM Comput. Surv., vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 223252, Sept. 1977. [18] C. Reardon, J. Profumo, and A. D. George, Comparative simulative analysis of WDM lans for avionics platforms, in IEEE Military Communications Conf. (MILCOM), 2325 Oct. 2006, pp. 17. [19] A. Kumar, M. Sivakumar, D. Wang, and J. Y. McNair, Effect of trafc patterns on optical time-division-multiplexed/WDM networks for avionics, in IEEE Avionics, Fiber-Optics and Photonics Technology Conf., 30 Sept.2 Oct. 2008, pp. 7374.

Packet latency (us)

Under controller fault No controller fault

Throughput (Gbps)

0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Offered high-priority load (Mbps) (b) Throughput degradation
Under controller fault No controller fault

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Offered high-priority load (Mbps) (a) Latency degradation

Fig. 24. (Color online) Effect of controller failure on high priority inter-subsystem trafc.

and equally on each node. Their intensities are increased at the same pace from 5 Mbps to 35 Mbps. The high priority trafc is destined according to the inter-subsystem trafc conguration, while the M&L priority trafcs are uniformly destined across the network. The inter-subsystem (cockpit wing I) latency and throughput for the high priority trafc are shown in Fig. 24. It is observed that the high priority trafc can still be delivered even in the presence of a backbone controller failure. However, since there is no lightpath established between the cockpit and the neighboring subsystem of wing I, the high priority trafc suffers latency and throughput degradation because it has to utilize the M&L priority bandwidth in both the backbone and the subsystem network.

VIII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have reported our progress on development of a simulation framework for optical local area networks (DRAGON), which enables a multi-layer network simulation. Its functional merits and correctness were veried through fully modeling and simulating a proposed avionic two-tier fault-tolerant WDM LAN architecture.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by the United States Navy, under Award No. N68335-06-C-0386-P00001, and RSoft Design Group, Inc.

R EFERENCES
[1] F. Karinou, I. Roudas, K. Vlachos, C. S. Petrou, A. Vgenis, and B. R. Hemenway, Wavelength-space permutation switch with coherent PDM QPSK transmission for supercomputer optical interconnects, in Optical Fiber Communication and the Nat.