An adaptive unconstrained routing algorithm in all-optical networks

Abstract

We consider the problem of routing in all-optical networks and propose an adaptive unconstrained algorithm, namely Optimal Hop-Load Compromise-based (OHLC) algorithm. Many papers have shown that a path traversing more hops and/or carrying more loads is more probably blocked. However, we observed that, among all possible paths for a source-destination pair, it is very difficult to find a path which is both shortest and least loaded. Therefore, OHLC attempts to route a connection with a path that has an optimal compromise between its hop-count and actual offered load. Our proposed algorithm is time-efficient with the complexity of O(n(2)), where n is number of network nodes. Simulation results (in a ring network, a fully connected network, and the NSFNET) show that OHLC can reduce call blocking probability by more than 22% to 78%, compared to the least-loaded routing algorithm.