A distributed ant-based algorithm for routing and wavelength assignment in an optical burst switching flexible spectrum network with transmission impairments

Abstract

This work describes a distributed algorithm inspired by ant colony optimisation for a solution to the problem of dynamic routing and wavelength assignment with wavelength continuity constraint in optical burst switched networks. The evaluation was conducted in a wavelength division multiplexed network environment with limited number of wavelength channels and in a flexible spectrum network environment undergoing transmission impairments. The simulations in the flexible spectrum network environment aim to replicate the effects of both linear and nonlinear physical layer impairments. Under these effects, an optical burst control packet could be lost during traversal of the network with no measure in place to notify the network of the loss or to free up optical resource reservations. The optical burst switching acknowledgement protocol has been modified in this work to account for a burst control packet failure by implementing a traversal acknowledgement to cater for its loss. The performance of the distributed ant-based algorithm has been extensively evaluated on several network topologies and compared with that obtained by shortest path routing and ant colony routing and wavelength assignment. The results show that the distributed ant-based algorithm significantly improves the burst transmission success probability in the wavelength division multiplexed network environment and provides a good solution in the flexible spectrum network environment undergoing transmission impairments.