TRAFFIC OPTIMIZATION AND RECONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT OF MULTIWAVELENGTH MULTIHOP BROADCAST LIGHTWAVE NETWORKS

Lightwave network architectures have emerged that aim to go far beyond simply exploiting the huge point-to-point transmission capabilities o f fiber optics. One of the most powerful and promising feature of opti cal networks is their ability to be dynamically reconfigured by retuni ng the optical transmitters/receivers. This ability to realize a logic al connectivity among network nodes independently of the physical infr astructure allows to (1) increase network utilization while providing better network performance by adapting the bandwidth allocation to cha nging traffic loads and (2) react to failure by bypassing those elemen ts that failed (fault-tolerant/self-healing capabilities). In this pap er, we study and review the literature on the two main research proble ms raised by dynamic reconfiguration of multiwavelength multihop broad cast lightwave networks. The two problems are (1) traffic optimization to find the ''best'' configuration for a given traffic pattern, and ( 2) reconfiguration management togo from one configuration to another. We present mathematical formulations for the problems, reference NP-co mpleteness results, and describe and compare heuristic algorithms. We also discuss open research problems. This work is limited to broadcast optical networks, and does not directly apply to wavelength-routed op tical networks, where the wavelengths making up the logical connectivi ty among nodes have to be allocated and routed. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scie nce B.V. All rights reserved.