Survivable routing in interdependent power-optical networks

Abstract

In the modern age, infrastructure networks such as power grids and optical networks are often interconnected in terms of operation and thus are also prone to interdependent failure risks. Optical networks facilitate high-speed important network communications via lightpaths that are provisioned over optical fibers, while power grids deliver electricity for supporting vital client operations via high voltage transmission lines. Optical nodes require electricity supply to function while power nodes may require remote monitoring, control, and communication. As such, the failure of any nodes in the optical network or power grid may lead to the failure of other nodes as well due to cascading failure effects. Our main contribution is we propose a two-phase algorithm for finding disjoint paths in an optical network that do not share any nodes with common failure risk due to dependency relation with a power grid. We also show that higher number of dependency links leads to lower chance of such path existing and higher computation time.