Load-balanced fixed routing in all-optical WDM networks

Fixed routing is favoured because it simplifies physical layer engineering, such as link budget calculations. The use of the fixed routing scheme can achieve fast bandwidth provisioning at the expense of inferior network blocking performance and lack of adaptability to traffic variation. In this paper, a load-balanced fixed routing scheme is proposed. For each source-destination pair, it assigns a fixed path such that the load-balancing requirement is met. This scheme is formulated into an Integer Linear Programming process. Both simulation and analytical methods are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed planning algorithm. We also modify an analytical model of blocking probability by considering the load-balancing characteristic.