Coded Path Protection: Efficient Conversion of Sharing to Coding

Link failures in wide area networks are common and cause significant data losses. Mesh-based protection schemes offer high capacity efficiency but they are slow and require complex signaling. Additionally, real-time reconfiguration of a cross connect threatens their transmission integrity. On the other hand, coding-based protection schemes are proactive. Therefore, they have higher restoration speed, lower signaling complexity, and higher transmission integrity. This paper introduces a coding based protection scheme, named Coded Path Protection (CPP). In CPP, a backup copy of the primary data is encoded with other data streams, resulting in capacity savings. This paper presents an optimal and simple capacity placement and coding group formation algorithm.