Dynamic reconfiguration of wavelength-routed WDM networks

The problem of reconfiguring wavelength-routed optical networks when the traffic demand changes is considered. When reconfiguring the Wavelength assignment according to the traffic demand, it is important to reduce number of receivers that need to be retuned. Furthermore, after the reconfiguration, the load needs to be balanced among the wavelengths. The tradeoff here is between the number of retunings and the degree of network load balance. After tracking real traffic demand to see the effect of the traffic changes on the network load balance, an algorithm has been developed for wavelength reconfiguration, so that, the demand on most loaded channel is reduced by exchanging one node with the least loaded channel. The Most and Least Loaded Channel Balance (MLLCB) algorithm provides very good results in terms of the required number of retunings and the load balance. Comparison of MLLCB algorithm with GLPT algorithm shows a very significant improvement in performance.