Design of Survivable Circuit-Switched Communication Networks

Abstract

We address the problem of designing a circuit-switched network for voice communications operating in a military environment. The circuit-switched network design problem may be briefly stated as: given the topology, route tables and control discipline, end-to-end offered traffic and performance requirements, determine trunk group sizes such that the requirements are satisfied. One of the key requirements of a design is that the network be survivable, where survivability is based on different destruction scenario conditions. Our objective is to guarantee an acceptable level of performance for every node pair and under each of the different anticipated damage scenarios. The main contributions of our present work are the development of approaches for designing networks that simultaneously satisfy performance requirements for different destruction scenarios. We describe the architecture of a survivable, circuit-switched network. The key characteristics of the survivable network design problem are highlighted and differences with respect to classical trunk sizing problem are pointed out. An important aspect of our work is that the sizing is based on the logical topology of the network rather than its trunk group topology. One design approach, which we have used successfully, is presented in detail.