Optimal Routing Designs in Self-healing Communications Networks

Self-healing communication networks that allow re-routing of demands through switching processes at designated nodes are studied. It is shown how network utilization, demand throughput and reliability of such networks can be studied simultaneously to achieve an optimal design for all three. This is done through a max–min–max multi-commodity network flow formulation of the routing problem in which it is ensured that maximum network throughput is achieved with minimum loss of demands that are blocked due to single switching node failures. It is shown that a node-path linear programming approximation to the multi-commodity network flow formulation solves the problem for medium and large network sizes in moderate computational times.