COMBINED CHANNEL ALLOCATION AND ROUTING ALGORITHMS IN PACKET-SWITCHEDNETWORKS

Joint optimization of capacity and flow assignment (CFA) is considered for a least-cost routing and bandwidth allocation in packet switched networks, in which multiple links are modeled by parallel M/M/1 queues . A generic cost-objective function is introduced to reflect both swit ching and channel costs. Queueing, transmission, nodal processing and propagation delays are all incorporated into the optimization problem. The proposed CFA problem is shown to be a convex optimization problem , thus ensuring a global solution. Furthermore, a more general optimiz ation approach has been developed to circumvent the computational limi tation associated with the existing optimization formulation and to ca pture the discrete nature of channel allocation. (C) 1997 Elsevier Sci ence B.V.