MDP-based lightpath establishment for service differentiation in all-optical WDM networks with wavelength conversion capability

In this paper, we propose a service differentiation method for lightpath establishment in all-optical WDM networks. The proposed method derives the optimal lightpath establishment policy for each serve class based on a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The optimal policy considered here is to provide service differentiation for lightpath establishment and to utilize wavelengths effectively. Here, we focus on two cases for wavelength conversion capability; full-range wavelength conversion and limited-range wavelength conversion. For full-range wavelength conversion, the number of lightpaths for each class is considered as a state of MDP. On the other hand, for limited-range wavelength conversion, the service class of lightpath that has been established with each output wavelength is considered as the state. Based on these states, we derive the optimal policy for lightpath establishment. In both cases, we evaluate the performance of the proposed method with simulation. In numerical examples, we show that our proposed method can provide service differentiation and use wavelengths effectively regardless of wavelength conversion capability.