An Alarm Filtering Algorithm for Optical Communication Networks

Jean-Yves Le Boudec, Carmen Mas
1997
Report or working paper

Abstract

A single failure in a communication network can trigger many alarms. We propose an alarm filtering algorithm for the management of an optical network using Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM). The algorithm supports: (i) multiple failures and (ii) passive network elements that do not generate alarms but may fail. This algorithm will be applied to the network of the ACTS COBNET project.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/52238?ln=en

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Related concepts

Related publications

1997

Fault Localization at the WDM layer

Jean-Yves Le Boudec, Carmen Mas, Patrick Thiran

A single failure in a communication network may trigger many alarms. When the communication network uses optical fibres as transmission medium and increases its capacity by using Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM), the number of alarms and the difficulty to locate the failure are considerably higher. In this case, a single failure may interrupt several channels which causes a large information loss. We propose an Alarm Filtering Algorithm (AFA) for the fault management of an optical network that supports multiple failures and works in the presence of passive elements, that is, network elements which may fail but never generate an alarm (e.g. optical fibres). The algorithm provides a list of components whose failure explain the observed alarms. It avoids the use of failure probabilities, which are difficult to estimate, and does not need a global knowledge of the network topology. Moreover it also tolerates alarm losses and false alarms. The algorithm is tailored to the specific behaviour of the hardware components of an optical network when a failure occurs. The classification of the network components according to the alarm signals they generate enables a formalisation of the alarm-filtering problem and results in an efficient algorithm for localising the failure(s). This algorithm is applied to the WDM rings of the COBNET network~\cite{cobnet} (COBNET is a European ACTS project) and to a meshed optical network with the ARPA2 topology. Keywords: Alarm filtering, optical communication networks, fault diagnosis

1999

Fault Localisation for optical networks

Jean-Yves Le Boudec, Carmen Mas

A single failure in a communication network may trigger many alarms. When the communication network uses optical fibres as a transmission medium and increases its capacity by using Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Space Division Multiplexing (SDM), the number of alarms and the difficulty to locate the failure are considerably higher. In this scenario, a single failure may interrupt several channels and the quantity of lost information is larger. We propose an alarm filtering algorithm for the fault management of an optical network that supports multiple failures and works in the presence of passives elements. A passive element is an netwrok element which may fail but never generates an alarm (e. g. an optical fiber). Our algorithm avoids the use of failure probabilities because they are difficult to estimate. The algorithm also accepts alarm losses. It presents to the human manager a list of faults which may have caused the observed alarms. We present a definition of teh problem and its abstraction. A feature of the algorithm is that it does not need a global knowledge of the network topology. The algorithm will be applied to the optical network of the ACTS COBNET project.

1998