Availability analysis and comparison of different WDM systems

We begin reasons why high system availability is important. Furthermore, the basic terms are introduced pertaining to the availability with particular review of the parallel structure. Then the availability of different wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems is analysed: point to point, chain and ring with 1+1 protection of the wavelength channel, plus the influence of availability of nodes and links on the total system availability. The data on failure intensity and mean time to repair of certain components were taken from various literature sources. We assumed in the analysis a WDM system with 16 wavelengths and 2.5 Gbit/s capacity per wavelength channel. Finally, results of calculation and comparisons of availability of different WDM systems and proposals for improvement of their availability are presented.