Traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks using dynamic path selection strategy

In wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, the bandwidth request of a traffic stream can be much lower than the capacity of a lightpath. Efficiently grooming low-speed connections onto high-capacity lightpaths will improve the network throughput and reduce the network cost. In WDM/SONET ring networks, it has been shown in the optical network literature that by carefully grooming the low-speed connection and using wavelength-division multiplexer (OADM) to perform the optical bypass at intermediate nodes, electronic ADMs can be saved and network cost will be reduced. In this study, we investigate the traffic-grooming problem in a WDM-based optical mesh topology network. Our objective is to improve the network throughput. We study the node architecture for a WDM mesh network with traffic-grooming capability. A mathematical formulation of the traffic-grooming problem is presented in this study and several fast heuristics are also proposed and evaluated.

In wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks, wavelength utilization is limited by the mismatch between the high bandwidth that one wavelength can provide and the relatively low bandwidth request of a single connection. Traffic grooming which grooms multiple connections onto one wavelength is a desirable technique to improve resource utilization. However, with unpredictable traffic demand, the newly arrived request may not be accommodated using remaining resources. Rerouting which reroutes existing connections such that the newly arrived request can be accommodated is an effective approach to further improve network throughput. In this paper, we study adaptive intentional connection rerouting which intentionally triggers rerouting algorithm according to network status, with the aim to reserve maximum resources for future connections. There are two important issues in intentional rerouting scheme: when to trigger rerouting algorithm and the rule to reroute the accommodated connections. The answers to the questions can reduce network blocking probability within an appropriate number of rerouting. In this paper, we propose to use biological attractor selection approach to address the above issues so that rerouting can be performed at the right time to accommodate unpredictable traffic demand. The proposed rerouting scheme can also improve system robustness given its adaptability. The simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed adaptive rerouting approach.

In wavelength routed optical networks, the number of wavelength channels is limited due to several constraints and each wavelength as well as each lightpath support traffic in the Gbps range. On the other hand, the traffic requested by an individual connection is still in the Mbps range. Therefore, to utilize the network resources (such as bandwidth and transceivers) effectively, several low-speed traffic streams have to be efficiently groomed or multiplexed into one or more high-speed lightpaths. The grooming problem of a static demand is considered as an optimization problem. In this work, we have investigated the traffic grooming problem with the objective of maximizing the network throughput for wavelength-routed mesh networks and map this problem to the clique partitioning problem. We have proposed an algorithm to handle general multi-hop static traffic grooming based on the clique partitioning concept. The efficiency of our approach has been established through extensive simulation on different sets of traffic demands with different bandwidth granularities for different network topologies and compared the approach with existing algorithms.

In a many-to-many session, a participant distributes and receives traffic flows to/from all others in the same session. It is desirable to achieve both high resource utilization and low power consumption when such sessions are provisioned. In wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, traffic grooming has been widely applied as the key technology for aggregating sessions to improve resource utilization. However, the current many-to-many grooming approaches, the lightpath circle and hubbed light-tree, do not make an effort to reduce the power consumption of many-to-many sessions. In this paper, we formulate the green routing and aggregation of many-to-many sessions problem and prove its NP-completeness. For problem solving in WDM optical networks, we apply a rational combined method of lightpaths. Both an integer linear programming-based approach and a novel graph-based heuristic are devised. We further provide an illustrative comparison between our heuristic and the existing benchmarks in terms of power consumption. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that, compared with the benchmarks, our heuristic improves the average power efficiency in the range of 13-19%.

To utilize the wavelength resources of Internet protocol (IP) over wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, a multi-constrained multicast traffic grooming algorithm is proposed in this paper. This algorithm can achieve multicast traffic grooming in IP over WDM optical networks under multi-constraints, including the number of optical transceivers, wavelength conversion capability and wavelength splitting capability. We simulated the traffic grooming algorithm using the topology of GEANT. Emulation results show that our algorithm has a lower blocking proportion compared with the multi-hop traffic grooming algorithm, which can achieve multicast traffic grooming more effectively.

A novel robust routing algorithm for multi-granularity connection requests in wavelength division multiplexing mesh networks

In wavelength routed optical networks, each optical link is capable of carrying traffic using several wavelengths and each wavelength as well as lightpath support traffic in the Gbps range. On the other hand, the traffic requested by individual connection is still in the Mbps range. Therefore, to utilize the network resources (bandwidth, transceivers, etc.) effectively, several low-speed traffic streams have to be efficiently groomed or multiplexed into a high-speed lightpath. In this work, we have investigated the traffic grooming problem with the objective of maximizing the network throughput for wavelength routed mesh networks. We have proposed an algorithm to handle general multi-hop static traffic grooming based on genetic algorithm. The efficacy of our approach has been established through extensive simulation on different sets of traffic demands under different network topologies and compared with an efficient heuristics proposed in the literature.

In optical networks with huge transmission capability, Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) has been actively studied in the research community. Traffic grooming technology based on divided bandwidth of a wavelength by WDM is very important for the network cost. This paper proposes a traffic grooming algorithm that employs the table for shortest Edge Disjoint Paths (EDPs) with clever selection on demands. Comprehensive simulations in various network environments show that the proposed algorithm outperforms well-known Maximizing Resource Utilization (MRU) up to 15% for the network throughput and up to 17% for the running time.KeywordsNetwork ThroughputNode PairConnection RequestWavelength AssignmentVirtual TopologyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

With the increasing diversity of applications supported over optical networks, new service guarantees must be offered to network customers. Among the emerging data-intensive applications are those which require their data to be transferred before a predefined deadline. We call these deadline-driven requests (DDRs). In such applications, data-transfer finish time (which must be accomplished before the deadline) is the key service guarantee that the customer wants. In fact, the amount of bandwidth allocated to transfer a request is not a concern for the customer as long as its service deadline is met. Hence, the service provider can choose the bandwidth (transmission rate) to provision the request. In this case, even though DDRs impose a deadline constraint, they provide scheduling flexibility for the service provider since it can choose the transmission rate while achieving two objectives: 1) satisfying the guaranteed deadline; and 2) optimizing the network's resource utilization. We investigate the problem of provisioning DDRs with flexible transmission rates in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks, although this approach is generalizable to other networks also. We investigate several (fixed and adaptive to network state) bandwidth-allocation policies and study the benefit of allowing dynamic bandwidth adjustment, which is found to generally improve network performance. We show that the performance of the bandwidth-allocation algorithms depends on the DDR traffic distribution and on the node architecture and its parameters. In addition, we develop a mathematical formulation for our problem as a mixed integer linear program (MILP), which allows choosing flexible transmission rates and provides a lower bound for our provisioning algorithms.

Traffic grooming in optical networks is the process of multiplexing and demultiplexing low-speed traffic streams onto high-speed wavelengths. The research in the domain of traffic grooming mainly focuses on minimizing number of SONET add/drop multiplexers (SADMs) in SONET/WDM rings and it has been shown that they can potentially be reduced by careful assignment of low-speed traffic streams onto high-speed wavelengths. However, the cost of the network not only depends on the number of SADMs, but also the number of wavelengths and the grooming ratio. It is often the case that all of them cannot be minimized simultaneously. In this article, the problem of minimization of cost of a SONET/WDM unidirectional ring has been modeled as a multiobjective optimization problem which simultaneously minimizes the number of SADMs, the number of wavelengths, and the grooming ratio. A popular multiobjective genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) has been used as the underlying optimization tool. The resultant set of near-Pareto-optimal solutions contains a number of nondominated solutions, which the user can judge relatively and pick up the most promising one according to the problem requirements. Performance of the proposed algorithm has been demonstrated on different network topologies.

This paper investigates the problem of dynamically establishing dependable connections in traffic-grooming wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks, and proposes a dynamic shared sub-path protection (SSPP) scheme for multi-granularity traffic. To establish a dependable connection, SSPP searches a primary path for each connection request, and then it segments the found path into several equal-length sub-paths, and computes their corresponding backup paths, respectively. In SSPP, if two sub-paths are fiber-disjoint then their backup paths can share backup resources to obtain the optimal spare capacity. Based on dynamic traffic with different load, the performance of SSPP has been investigated via simulations. The results show that SSPP can make the tradeoffs between the resource utilization and the restoration time.

In general, multicast routing and wavelength assignment (MC-RWA) can be subdivided in routing and wavelength assignment issues in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks. Previous studies on WDM multicast have mainly focused on WDM multicast routing. The multicast wavelength assignment problem is studied in this paper. A unicast routing path can be established by a lightpath in an all-optical network. However, in the multicasting case, a multicast routing tree can be established by a single light-tree or several lightpaths, or a combination of several light-trees and lightpaths. We propose a wavelength assignment algorithm for finding an optimal combination of lightpaths and light-trees to construct a newly required multicast session. First of all, two cost functions are given to evaluate the establishing cost for each feasible wavelength, and then find a set of wavelengths that covers all destinations with the minimal cost using Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation. We focus on maximizing the total number of users served in a multicast session and the network capacity. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can improve system resource utilization and reduce the blocking probability compared with the First-Fit algorithm.

Extending light-trail into elastic optical networks for dynamic traffic grooming

We study the problem of providing real-time service to hard and soft real-time messages in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks. We propose and evaluate a set of scheduling algorithms which schedule message transmissions in single-hop WDM passive star networks based on specific time constraints. We compare the performances of our algorithms with that of the typical WDM scheduling algorithm which does not consider the time constraint of the transmitted messages by discrete-event simulations and an analytical model. We find that the improvement on real-time performance can be attributed to our scheduling algorithms where the time constraint of messages has been taken into consideration. This study suggests that when scheduling real-time messages in WDM networks, one has to consider not only the problem of resources allocation in the network but also the problem of sequencing messages based on their time constraints.

We investigate waveband switching (WBS) with different grouping strategies in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks. End-to-end waveband switching (ETE-WBS) and same-destination-intermediate waveband switching (SD-IT-WBS) are analyzed and compared in terms of blocking probability and cost savings. First, an analytical model for ETE-WBS is proposed to determine the network blocking probability in a mesh network. For SD-IT-WBS, a simple waveband switching algorithm is presented. An analytical model to determine the network blocking probability is proposed for SD-IT-WBS based on the algorithm. The analytical results are validated by comparing with simulation results. Both results match well and show that ETE-WBS slightly outperforms SD-IT-WBS in terms of blocking probability. On the other hand, simulation results show that SD-IT-WBS outperforms ETE-WBS in terms of cost savings.