Number Of SONET Add-drop Multiplexers Research Articles

Multiobjective evolutionary approach to cost-effective traffic grooming in unidirectional SONET/WDM rings

Traffic grooming in optical networks is the process of multiplexing and demultiplexing low-speed traffic streams onto high-speed wavelengths. The research in the domain of traffic grooming mainly focuses on minimizing number of SONET add/drop multiplexers (SADMs) in SONET/WDM rings and it has been shown that they can potentially be reduced by careful assignment of low-speed traffic streams onto high-speed wavelengths. However, the cost of the network not only depends on the number of SADMs, but also the number of wavelengths and the grooming ratio. It is often the case that all of them cannot be minimized simultaneously. In this article, the problem of minimization of cost of a SONET/WDM unidirectional ring has been modeled as a multiobjective optimization problem which simultaneously minimizes the number of SADMs, the number of wavelengths, and the grooming ratio. A popular multiobjective genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) has been used as the underlying optimization tool. The resultant set of near-Pareto-optimal solutions contains a number of nondominated solutions, which the user can judge relatively and pick up the most promising one according to the problem requirements. Performance of the proposed algorithm has been demonstrated on different network topologies.

On the complexity and algorithm of grooming regular traffic in WDM optical networks

In SONET/WDM networks, a high-speed wavelength channel is usually shared by multiple low-rate traffic demands to make efficient use of the wavelength capacity. The multiplexing is known as traffic grooming and performed by SONET Add-Drop Multiplexers (SADM). The maximum number of low-rate traffic demands that can be multiplexed into one wavelength channel is called grooming factor. Since SADMs are expensive, a key optimization goal of traffic grooming is to minimize the total number of SADMs in order to satisfy a given set of traffic demands. As an important communication traffic pattern, all-to-all traffic has been widely studied for the traffic grooming problem. In this paper, we study the regular traffic pattern, which is considered as a generalization of the all-to-all traffic pattern. We focus on the Unidirectional Path-Switched Ring (UPSR) networks. We prove that the traffic grooming problem is NP-hard for the regular traffic pattern in UPSR networks, and show that the problem does not admit a Fully Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (FPTAS). We further prove that the problem remains NP-hard even if the grooming factor is any fixed value chosen from a subset of integers. We also propose a performance guaranteed algorithm to minimize the total number of required SADMs, and show that the algorithm achieves a better upper bound than previous algorithms. Extensive simulations are conducted, and the empirical results validate that our algorithm outperforms the previous ones in most cases. In addition, our algorithm always uses the minimum number of wavelengths, which are precious resources as well in optical networks.

SONET ADMs Minimization with Divisible Paths

We consider an optical routing problem. SONET add-drop multiplexers (ADMs) are the dominant cost factor in SONET/WDM rings. The number of SONET ADMs required by a set of traffic streams is determined by the routing and wavelength assignment of the traffic streams. In this paper we consider the version where a traffic stream may be divided into several parts and assigned different wavelengths. A specific division may increase or decrease the number of ADMs needed for a given input. Following previous work, we consider two versions. In the arc version the route of each traffic stream is given as input, and we need to decide on divisions of streams, and then to assign wavelengths so as to minimize the total number of used SONET ADMs. In the chord version the route is not prespecified, but is assigned by the algorithm, and only after this step are the divisions done and wavelengths assigned. The previously best known approximation algorithm for the arc version has a performance guarantee of 5/4 = 1.25 whereas the previously best known approximation algorithm for the chord version has a performance guarantee of 3/2 = 1.5. We improve both these results. We present a 36/29 ≈ 1.24138-approximation algorithm for the arc version and a 7/5 = 1.4-approximation algorithm for the chord version.

Wavelength Assignment to Minimize the Number of SONET ADMs in WDM Rings

Optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) rings are being deployed to support SONET/SDH self-healing rings. In such systems, multiple SONET/SDH self-healing rings are realized over a single physical optical ring through wavelength division multiplexing. The cost of such a system is dominated by the SONET add/drop multiplexers (ADMs). To minimize the system cost, algorithms must be developed to assign wavelengths to lightpaths in the system so that the number of ADMs required is minimized. This problem of optimal wavelength assignment to minimize the number of SONET ADMs is known to be NP-hard. Existing heuristic algorithms for this problem include the assign first heuristic, the iterative matching heuristic and the iterative merging heuristic. In this paper, we develop an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation for this problem, propose a new wavelength assignment heuristic, and evaluate the existing and the newly proposed heuristic using the ILP formulation. We conclude that the performance of the newly proposed heuristic is very close to optimal.

Design and Performance Evaluation of Traffic Grooming Algorithms in WDM Multi-Ring Networks

In this paper, we propose novel traffic grooming algorithms to reduce the cost of the entire system in WDM multi-ring networks. In order to achieve this goal, it is important to construct a virtual topology and groom the traffic in these networks. We consider four kinds of virtual topologies of WDM multi-ring networks according to the way in which traffic is transmitted among rings. Accordingly, we design four kinds of traffic grooming (TG) algorithms depending on the considered virtual topologies: mixed (MTG), partially mixed (PMTG), separate (STG), and independent (ITG) traffic grooming algorithms. Each algorithm consists of a separation, a connection-ring construction, and a grooming procedure. In the separation procedure, all traffic connections are classified into intra and inter-connections. The connection-ring construction procedure makes full connection-rings from traffic connections. The grooming procedure groups connection-rings onto a wavelength in order to reduce the number of SONET add/drop multiplexers (SADMs) and wavelengths and to improve the utilization of network resources. To analyze the performance of each algorithm, a circular multi-ring architecture with uniform traffic is considered. The simulation results show that ITG and PMTG are more efficient in terms of wavelengths. STG and PMTG require a smaller number of SADMs.

An effective and comprehensive approach for traffic grooming and wavelength assignment in SONET/WDM rings

In high-speed SONET rings with point-to-point WDM links, the cost of SONET add-drop multiplexers (S-ADMs) can be dominantly high. However, by grooming traffic (i.e., multiplexing lower-rate streams) appropriately and using wavelength ADMs (WADMs), the number of S-ADMs can be dramatically reduced. In this paper, we propose optimal or near-optimal algorithms for traffic grooming and wavelength assignment to reduce both the number of wavelengths and the number of S-ADMs. The algorithms proposed are generic in that they can be applied to both unidirectional and bidirectional rings having an arbitrary number of nodes under both uniform and nonuniform (i.e., arbitrary) traffic with an arbitrary grooming factor. Some lower bounds on the number of wavelengths and S-ADMs required for a given traffic pattern are derived, and used to determine the optimality of the proposed algorithms. Our study shows that using the proposed algorithms, these lower bounds can he closely approached in most cases or even achieved in some cases. In addition, even when using a minimum number of wavelengths, the savings in S-ADMs due to traffic grooming (and the use of WADMs) are significant, especially for large networks.