Traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks using dynamic path selection strategy

Abstract

In wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks, the bandwidth request of a traffic stream can be much lower than the capacity of a lightpath. Therefore, to utilize the network resources (such as bandwidth and transceivers) effectively, several low-speed traffic streams can be efficiently groomed or multiplexed into high-speed lightpaths, thus we can improve the network throughput and reduce the network cost. Traffic grooming can be considered separately at each individual node based on only local information (local grooming), or in cooperation between nodes participating in grooming (global grooming). In the second case, nodes must exchange their information about available resources and grooming strategies. The grooming problem of a static demand is considered as an optimization problem. In this work, we have proposed a traffic grooming algorithm to maximize the network throughput for wavelength-routed mesh networks. The efficiency of our approach has been established through extensive simulation on different sets of traffic demands with different bandwidth granularities for different network topologies and compared the approach with existing algorithm.