Routing and wavelength assignment in wavelength division multiplexing networks

The problem of wavelength routing and assignment (WRA) to lighpaths in a multi-hop wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical network has been addressed in this paper. The wavelength assignment problem has been solved by mapping it to a heuristic based clique partitioning problem. For routing a connection, K-shortest paths are found out and a path having minimum link interference with other paths in the network is assigned. Physical hop (PH) balancing has also been done to balance physical hops and load. The efficacy of the algorithm has been tested on several networks for various lightpath demands through extensive simulation. The wavelength assignment and timing efficiencies are studied and compared with the existing best-known wavelength assignment algorithms. It has been observed that, for a wide range of light-path requests, the proposed algorithm performs favorably when compared with the existing ones. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.