Survivability of Fixed Mobile Convergent Access Networks

Abstract:
Survivability of access networks should be reconsidered with the upcoming transition towards Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). In FMC networks, fixed and mobile traffic will be carried over a joint access infrastructure, increasing the risk of high impact failures that cut off all (even emergency) services. Hence, convergence brings new challenges, making the FMC network a critical infrastructure. New mechanisms are required, assuring survivability of a basic set of services (e.g. emergency services), and these solutions must respect the strong cost pressure in the access network domain by exploiting the new opportunities provided by convergence. In this paper, we propose metrics to identify the most critical failure events, and to evaluate survivability of the FMC network infrastructure. Availability requirements of typical reference services over the FMC network are discussed, and the minimal survivable subset of the FMC infrastructure is identified to avoid disruption of these services. Finally, we investigate and propose smart FMC network planning strategies and protection concepts to meet availability requirements when the use of redundancy and protection resources is very limited.