Efficient routing and wavelength assignment for multicast in WDMnetworks

The next generation multimedia applications such as video conferencing and HDTV have raised tremendous challenges on the network design, both in bandwidth and service. As wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) networks have emerged as a promising candidate for future networks with large bandwidth, supporting efficient multicast in WDM networks becomes eminent. Different from the IP layer, the cost of multicast at the WDM layer involves not only bandwidth (wavelength) cost, but also wavelength conversion cost and light splitting cost. It is well known that the optimal multicast problem in WDM networks is NP-hard. In this paper, we develop an efficient approximation algorithm consisting of two separate but integrated steps: multicast routing and wavelength assignment. We prove that the problem of optimal wavelength assignment on a multicast tree is not NP-hard; in fact, an optimal wavelength assignment algorithm with complexity of O(NW) is presented. Simulation results have revealed that the optimal wavelength assignment beats greedy algorithms by a large margin in networks using many wavelengths on each link such as dense wavelength-division-multiplexing (DWDM) networks. Our proposed heuristic multicast routing algorithm takes into account both the cost of using wavelength on links and the cost of wavelength conversion. The resulting multicast tree is derived from the optimal lightpaths used for unicast     

On Multicast Routing for Wavelength-Routed WDM Networks with Dynamic Membership

Future broadband networks must support integrated services and offer flexible bandwidth usage. In our previous work in [1], we explored the optical link control (OLC) layer on the top of optical layer that enables the possibility of bandwidth on-demand (BoD) service directly over wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) networks. Today, more and more applications and services such as video-conferencing software and Virtual LAN service require multicast support over the underlying networks. Currently, it is difficult to provide wavelength multicast over optical switches without optical/electronic conversions although the conversion takes extra cost. In this paper, based on the proposed wavelength router architecture (equipped with ATM switches to offer O/E and E/O conversions when necessary), a dynamic multicast routing algorithm is proposed to furnish multicast services over WDM networks. The goal is to join a new group member into the multicast tree so that the cost, including the link cost and the optical/electronic conversion cost, is kept as low as possible. The same algorithm can be applied to other wavelength routing architectures with redefinition of electronic copy cost. The effectiveness of the proposed wavelength router architecture as well as the dynamic multicast algorithm is evaluated by simulation.     

Multicast routing and wavelength assignment with delay constraint in WDM networks with sparse wavelength conversions

With the developments in multimedia and other real-time group applications, the question of how to establish multicast trees satisfying Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements is becoming a very important problem. In this paper, multicast routing and wavelength assignment with delay constraint (MCRWA-DC) in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks with sparse wavelength conversions is studied. We propose a colored multigraph model for the temporarily available wavelengths. Based on this colored multigraph model, two heuristic algorithms are proposed to solve the MCRWA-DC problem. The proposed algorithms have the following advantages:(1) finish multicast routing and wavelength assignment in one step; (2) the total cost of the multicast tree is low; (3) the delay from the source node to any multicast destination node is bounded; and (4) locally minimize the number of wavelength conversions and the number of different wavelengths used to satisfy a multicast request. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms work well and achieve satisfactory blocking probability.     

一种稀疏分光配置约束下的WDM网络多播RWA算法

在波长路由WDM网络中,波长路由和波长分配是RWA算法提高光网络阻塞性能的两个重要阶段和关键技术。文章针对现有的稀疏分光配置约束下的光网络多播RWA算法复杂度高、代价高的问题,提出了一种新的稀疏分光器配置的RWA多播算法。该算法摒弃传统RWA算法在波长路由阶段就考虑稀疏分光约束能力的惯性思维,论文首次提出在波长分配阶段,才通过多播长转换器实现满足稀疏分光约束条件的分光能力传递。仿真结果表明,所提算法在平均代价和所需波长数目方面都获得了较优的性能。     

Multicast wavelength assignment with sparse wavelength converters to maximize the network capacity using ILP formulation in WDM mesh networks

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.This research was partially supported by the Grant of National Science Council, R.O.C. (NSC 94-2745-E-155-007-URD).     

Performance analysis of multicast routing and wavelength assignment protocol with dynamic traffic grooming in WDM networks

The need for on‐demand provisioning of wavelength‐routed channels with service‐differentiated offerings within the transport layer has become more essential because of the recent emergence of high bit rate Internet protocol (IP) network applications. Diverse optical transport network architectures have been proposed to achieve the above requirements. This approach is determined by fundamental advances in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technologies. Because of the availability of ultra long‐reach transport and all‐optical switching, the deployment of all‐optical networks has been made possible. The concurrent transmission of multiple streams of data with the assistance of special properties of fiber optics is called WDM. The WDM network provides the capability of transferring huge amounts of data at high speeds by the users over large distances. There are several network applications that require the support of QoS multicast, such as multimedia conferencing systems, video‐on‐demand systems, real‐time control systems, etc. In a WDM network, the route decision and wavelength assignment of lightpath connections are based mainly on the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA). The multicast RWA's task is to maximize the number of multicast groups admitted or minimize the call‐blocking probability. The dynamic traffic‐grooming problem in wavelength‐routed networks is generally a two‐layered routing problem in which traffic connections are routed over lightpaths in the virtual topology layer and lightpaths are routed over physical links in the physical topology layer. In this paper, a multicast RWA protocol for capacity improvement in WDM networks is designed. In the wavelength assignment technique, paths from the source node to each of the destination nodes and the potential paths are divided into fragments by the junction nodes and these junction nodes have the wavelength conversion capability. By using the concept of fragmentation and grouping, the proposed scheme can be generally applied for the wavelength assignment of multicast in WDM networks. An optimized dynamic traffic grooming algorithm is also developed to address the traffic grooming problem in mesh networks in the multicast scenario for maximizing the resource utilization and minimizing the blocking probability. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimization of wavelength assignment for QoS multicast in WDMnetworks

This paper discusses quality-of-service (QoS) multicast in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) networks. Given a set of QoS multicast requests, we are to find a set of cost suboptimal QoS routing trees and assign wavelengths to them. The objective is to minimize the number of wavelengths in the system. This is a challenging issue. It involves not only optimal QoS multicast routing, but also optimal wavelength assignment. Existing methods consider channel setup in WDM networks in two separate steps: routing and wavelength assignment, which has limited power in minimizing the number of wavelengths. In this paper, we propose a new optimization method, which integrates routing and wavelength assignment in optimization of wavelengths. Two optimization algorithms are also proposed in minimizing the number of wavelengths. One algorithm minimizes the number of wavelengths through reducing the maximal link load in the system; while the other does it by trying to free out the least used wavelengths. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms can produce suboptimal QoS routing trees and substantially save the number of wavelengths     

QoS-driven multicast routing in sparse-splitting optical networks

This paper investigates the quality-of-service (QoS)-driven multicast routing problem in a sparse-splitting optical network. The main objective is to minimize the total cost of wavelength channels utilized by the light-tree while satisfying required QoS parameters. In this paper, both the optical-layer constraints (e.g., optical signal power) and application-layer requirements (e.g., end-to-end delay and inter-destination delay variation) are considered as the QoS parameters. First, integer linear programming (ILP) formulations to solve the optimal multicast routing problem with the given QoS parameters are presented. Solving the ILP formulations for large-scale networks can easily overwhelm the capabilities of state-of-the-art computing facilities, and hence, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to construct a feasible light-tree that satisfies the required QoS parameters in large-scale networks. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm in terms of the cost of utilized wavelength channels.     

Virtual Source Based Multicast Routing in WDM Optical Networks

Wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) networks using wavelength-routing are considered to be potential candidates for the next generation wide-area backbone networks. Multicasting is the ability to transmit information from a single source node to multiple destination nodes and is becoming an important requirement in high-speed networks. As WDM technology matures and multicast applications become increasingly popular, supporting multicast routing at the WDM layer becomes an important and yet a challenging topic. This paper concerns with the problem of optical multicast routing in WDM networks. A few nodes in the network may have wavelength conversion and/or splitting capabilities. In this paper, a new multicast tree construction algorithm is proposed. This algorithm is based on a concept called virtual source. A virtual source is a node having both the splitting and wavelength conversion capabilities. By exploiting the presence of virtual source nodes, the proposed algorithm achieves improved performance. To further improve the performance, the algorithm assigns priorities to nodes based on their capabilities. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified through extensive simulation experiments.     

New algorithms for multicast routing and wavelength assignment in multi-hop optical WDM networks

We study the problem of multicast routing and wavelength assignment (MC-RWA) in multi-hop optical WDM networks with respect to several target functions. Specially, we first study the MC-RWA problem under the target of minimize maximum hops, an efficient MC-RWA algorithm was proposed for that case. But for the objective of minimizing the total number of wavelength conversions, problem turns out to be NP-hard, we proposed a new approximation MC-RWA algorithm based on group Steiner tree. At last, combining the two objectives, a bi-factor approximation algorithm was introduced to minimize the both targets in the system simultaneously.     

Routing and Wavelength Assignment in Multi-Segment WDM Optical Networks using Clustering Techniques

This paper studies the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem in multi-segment optical networks. The notion of network segment is referred to any part of the network that requires special consideration of wavelength routing such as separate administrative domains in a large scale optical network, sub-networks run by various service providers, etc. In multi-segment optical networks, each segment has different resource availability or hardware characteristics. The differences between multi-segment optical networks and homogeneous optical networks are discussed. We then present a resource abstraction technique called blocking island and define a multi-segment blocking island graph (BIG) network model. Using a minimum splitting routing heuristic introduced in the context of the blocking island paradigm in conjunction with the multi-segment BIG model, we propose a general RWA algorithm that takes a combined view of the network resource to integrate routing, wavelength assignment and gateway selection in a single routing framework. In the simulation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm by comparing it with other state-of-the-art heuristics in this area.     

Multicast with a new switching structure in optical networks

The emergence of new services demands for a multicast function in optical networks. At the same time, wavelength converters are introduced to increase the efficiency of wavelength usage. It is because of the high cost and complex architecture of optical multicast and wavelength conversion technology, that a new switch structure is introduced, in which optical splitters and wavelength converters are shared per-node. In order to accommodate this architecture, a multicast routing and wavelength assignment algorithm in a splitter–converter-sharing optical network and a changing link weight policy to balance network traffic are proposed. By extending RSVP-TE (Resource ReSerVation Protocol-Traffic Engineering) and OSPF-TE (Open Shortest Path First-Traffic Engineering), an optical multicast mechanism is provided, and message type, signaling flow, and finite state machine model are given. Simulations of NSFNET show that, when the number of splitters and converters are 50% and 12.5% of the full equipment respectively, the performance is close to the ideal case. Using a changing link weight policy can improve performance greatly, when there are enough splitters and converters.     

基于多条件约束的ASON动态组播路由算法

在将自动交换光网络(ASON)建模成着色多重图的基础上采用综合成本策略,设计了一种新的最小综合成本路径计算算法,并结合组播成员的动态变化特性提出一种满足多条件约束的动态组播路由(DMRMC)算法,使组播路由和波长分配在同一过程内完成,且尽可能使组播树的综合总成本最小,同时局部优化波长转换次数、分光次数和不同波长的使用数量。仿真实验表明,本文算法有效可行,与采用单成本策略的组播算法相比,其取得了更低的综合成本和更好的连接阻塞性能。     

Dynamic Multicast Session Provisioning in WDM Optical Networks with Sparse Splitting Capability

In this work, we study dynamic provisioning of multicast sessions in a wavelength-routed sparse splitting capable WDM network with an arbitrary mesh topology where the network consists of nodes with full, partial, or no wavelength conversion capabilities and a node can be a tap-and-continue (TaC) node or a splitting and delivery (SaD) node. The objectives are to minimize the network resources in terms of wavelength-links used by each session and to reduce the multicast session blocking probability. The problem is to route the multicast session from each source to the members of every multicast session, and to assign an appropriate wavelength to each link used by the session. We propose an efficient online algorithm for dynamic multicast session provisioning. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, we apply the integer linear programming (ILP) optimization tool on a per multicast session basis to solve off-line the optimal routing and wavelength assignment given a multicast session and the current network topology as well as its residual network resource information. We formulate the per session multicast routing and wavelength assignment problem as an ILP. With this ILP formulation, the multicast session blocking probability or success probability can then be estimated based on solving a series of ILPs off-line. We have evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed online algorithm via simulation in terms of session blocking probability and network resources used by a session. Simulation results indicate that our proposed computationally efficient online algorithm performs well even when a fraction of the nodes are SaD nodes.     

Multicast routing and wavelength assignment in multihop optical networks

This paper addresses multicast routing in circuit-switched multihop optical networks employing wavelength-division multiplexing. We consider a model in which multicast communication requests are made and released dynamically over time. A multicast connection is realized by constructing a multicast tree which distributes the message from the source node to all destination nodes such that the wavelengths used on each link and the receivers and transmitters used at each node are not used by existing circuits. We show that the problem of routing and wavelength assignment in this model is, in general, NP-complete. However, we also show that for any given multicast tree, the wavelength assignment problem can be solved in linear time.     

Avoidance of multicast incapable branching nodes for multicast routing in WDM networks

In this article we study the multicast routing problem in all-optical WDM networks under the spare light splitting constraint. To implement a multicast session, several light-trees may have to be used due to the limited fanouts of network nodes. Although many multicast routing algorithms have been proposed in order to reduce the total number of wavelength channels used (total cost) for a multicast session, the maximum number of wavelengths required in one fiber link (link stress) and the end-to-end delay are two parameters which are not always taken into consideration. It is known that the shortest path tree (SPT) results in the optimal end-to-end delay, but it can not be employed directly for multicast routing in sparse light splitting WDM networks. Hence, we propose a novel wavelength routing algorithm which tries to avoid the multicast incapable branching nodes (MIBs, branching nodes without splitting capability) in the shortest-path-based multicast tree to diminish the link stress. Good parts of the shortest-path-tree are retained by the algorithm to reduce the end-to-end delay. The algorithm consists of tree steps: (1) a DijkstraPro algorithm with priority assignment and node adoption is introduced to produce a SPT with up to 38% fewer MIB nodes in the NSF topology and 46% fewer MIB nodes in the USA Longhaul topology, (2) critical articulation and deepest branch heuristics are used to process the MIB nodes, (3) a distance-based light-tree reconnection algorithm is proposed to create the multicast light-trees. Extensive simulations demonstrate the algorithm’s efficiency in terms of link stress and end-to-end delay.     

基于蚁群系统的分布式RWA算法研究

针对波分复用(WDM)光网络中动态选路和波长分配(RWA)问题，提出了一种基于蚁群算法的分布式动态RWA方法。将蚁群算法与分层图模型结合，实现了RWA的并行计算。仿真结果表明，与现有最短路径法相比，该算法能有效地降低光路阻塞率，促进波长资源的合理分配，同时分布式的计算方式也降低了现代频繁变化的大型光网络的通信开销。     

Design of the optical path layer in multiwavelength cross-connectednetworks

We discuss the wavelength requirement for optical networks based on wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM). A mathematical model, to represent the routing and wavelength assignment in optical networks with or without wavelength conversion, is described, and metrics are defined to express the performance. A new heuristic for routing and wavelength assignment is proposed and compared with the Dijkstra algorithm and with a solution based on integer linear programming. The different techniques are applied to a variety of network examples with different traffic loads     

Multicast routing, load balancing, and wavelength assignment ontree of rings

There are two steps to establish a multicast connection in WDM networks: routing and wavelength assignment. The shortest path tree (SPT) and minimum spanning tree (MST) are the two widely used multicast routing methods. The SPT method minimizes the delay from the source to every destination along a routing tree, and the MST method is often used to minimize the network cost of the tree. Load balancing is an important objective in multicast routing, which minimizes the maximal link load in the system. The objective of wavelength assignment is to minimize the number of wavelengths used in the system. This paper analyzes the performance of the shortest path tree (SPT) and minimum spanning tree (MST) methods in the tree of ring networks, regarding the performance criteria such as the delay and network cost of the generated routing trees, load balancing, and the number of wavelengths required in the system. We prove that SPT and MST methods can not only produce routing trees with low network costs and short delays, but also have good competitive ratios for the load balancing problem (LBP) and wavelength assignment problem (WAP), respectively     

Optimal Multicast Routing and Wavelength Assignment on WDM Ring Networks Without Wavelength Conversion

We consider the multicast routing and wavelength assignment (MC-RWA) problem on WDM bidirectional ring networks without wavelength conversion. We give an integer programming formulation of the problem and propose an algorithm to solve it optimally. The algorithm is based on column generation and branch-and-price. We test the proposed algorithm on randomly generated data and the test results show that the algorithm gives optimal solutions to all of the test problems.