OTR: RAFONET-A Versatile and Scalable Approach for Optical Network Design and Analysis

To address the lack of versatile and scalable tools in the relatively new optical networking field, the research project proposes to conduct fundamental research on developing a novel approach called RAFONET (Rational Approximation For Optical Networks) for optical network design and analysis. RAFONET, which integrates advanced analytic and numerical techniques, will make it possible to evaluate many hard-to-measure yet crucial performance metrics in optical networks with a large number of wavelengths, various switching paradigms and associated protocols much faster and more accurate than before under a unified framework. In the application area, the PIs will apply the RAFONET approach to evaluate optical networks with optical circuit-switching (OCS) e.g., wavelength routing, or optical packet/burst switching (OPS/OBS). In addition, the proposed research project will compare OCS and OPS/OBS to determine, for example, how much resources is needed by OCS, and OPS/OBS to support a set of common input traffic streams that include periodic (e.g., voice) and aperiodic (e.g., data) traffic. In the algorithmic area, the PIs will study the effects of simulation errors on the performance of the rational approximation algorithm, and obtain some analytical results in bounding the interpolation errors when the sampling error is bounded by a polynomial for example. The PIs will also develop new methods based on, e.g., the combination of rational interpolation and cross entropy to combat such errors. Finally, the PIs will research the applicable scope and theoretic validation of the transformations applied in rational approximation algorithm. The ITR project will also develop course materials on numerical methods in optical network analysis, as well as other related topics.