Distributed Hierarchical Monitoring and Alarm Management in Transparent Optical Networks

Rapid fault detection and localization in transparent optical networks is crucial due to the high data rates at which they operate and optical transparency. Furthermore, large all- optical networks require distributed fault-management in order to achieve scalable, accurate, and rapid fault localization. In this work we present an efficient scheme for hierarchically distributed monitoring and fault-localization in transparent all- optical networks. We prove that the proposed scheme yields identical fault-localization capability as the centralized and flat fault-localization scheme, while allowing for distributed optimization of alarm-vector size and fault-localization. Simulation results provide supporting comparison of achievable fault localization capability and effective reduction of alarm- vector lengths and fault localization complexity for flat and hierarchically distributed monitoring approaches.