Power-efficient RWA in dynamic WDM optical networks considering different connection holding times

The challenges imposed by environmental issues, such as global warming and the energy crisis, are demanding more responsible energy usage, including in the optical networking field. In optical transmission networks, most of the electrical power is consumed by the optical-electrical-optical conversion in optical repeaters. Modern optical network control plane technologies allow idle optical repeaters to be put into a low-power sleep mode. Inspired by this, we propose a novel power-efficient routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) algorithm, called HTAPE. The HTAPE algorithm exploits the knowledge of the connection holding times to minimize the number of optical repeaters in the active mode, and hence reduce the total electricity consumption of the optical network. We test the new algorithm on the typical CERNET and USNET networks. Compared with traditional RWA algorithms without holding-time-awareness, it is observed that the HTAPE algorithm yields significant reductions in power consumption.