Provisioning dynamic and critical demand structures for geographically correlated failures

• Published in: Annales des télécommunications Vol. 73; no. 1; pp. 111 - 125
• Main Authors: Gardner, M Todd, Cheng, Yufei, Beard, Cory, Sterbenz, James P G, Medhi, Deep
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Springer Nature B.V 01.02.2018
• Subjects: Communications networks; Disasters; Failure; Heuristic methods; Infrastructure; Linear programming; Provisioning; Redundancy; Restoration; Telecommunications
• ISSN: 0003-4347; 1958-9395
• DOI: 10.1007/s12243-017-0618-z

During disasters and other geographically correlated failures, the local telecommunications infrastructure undergoes a unique set of challenges. First, the telecommunications infrastructure is typically damaged reducing the capability to sustain the normal level of demands on the networks. Second, the demands on the telecommunications infrastructure increase typically by an order of magnitude. This is both for critical demands and non-critical demands. Third, critical demands, which may now be used to support disaster first responder and recovery efforts take on a crucial role. In this work, we propose multi-situational linear programming techniques to create disaster modes that take advantage of the non-coincidence of disasters in different geographic areas simultaneously reducing cost and improving restoration of demands during disasters. We also propose efficient heuristics to provision for disasters at a lower cost than standard provisioning with 1 + 1 redundancy. Additionally, we use diverse routing techniques to reduce the likelihood of damage to critical services. The restoration of demands during disasters also presents challenges for network provisioners. We present both heuristic and linear programming methods to assist with restoration of services in stressed network environments giving critical demands priority. Finally, service level agreements (SLAs) are used to provide a framework for these concepts.