Survivable and Secure Elastic Optical Networks using Network Coding

In this work, the concept of network coding (NC) is used in conjunction with the routing and spectrum allocation (RSA) problem to jointly provide security and protection in elastic optical networks (EONs). Specifically, to provide security against eavesdropping attacks, a number of XOR operations are performed at specific network nodes using already established connections, enabling the confidential connections to transmit an encrypted version of their data. In order to protect and maintain the security of the confidential connections in the event of any single link failure, a protection mechanism is further proposed, enabling the receiver at the destination nodes to decode the signals during normal network operation as well as network operation under fault conditions. NC-based RSA algorithms are proposed for different classes of demands and their efficiency is examined in terms of spectrum utilization, network blocking, and the level of security they provide.