Dynamic traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks using a novel graph model

As our fiber-optic backbone networks migrate from interconnected SONET rings to arbitrary mesh topology, traffic grooming on WDM mesh networks becomes an extremely important research problem. (Traffic grooming refers to the problem of efficiently packing a set of low-speed connection requests onto high-capacity channels.) To address this problem, we employ a new, generic graph model for dynamic traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks, where connections arrive one at a time and hold for random time durations. The novelty of this model is that, by only manipulating the edges of an auxiliary graph created by the model and the weights of these edges, the model can achieve various objectives using different grooming policies, while taking into account various constraints such as transceivers, wavelengths, wavelength-conversion capabilities, and grooming capabilities. Based on the auxiliary graph, we develop a dynamic traffic-grooming algorithm which employs the simple shortest-path computation method to solve the trafficgrooming problem. Different grooming policies can be implemented by different weight functions assigned to the edges in the auxiliary graph. We propose four fixed grooming policies, whose performance is compared in various network scenarios. We also develop an Adaptive Grooming Policy (AGP), in which the weights of the edges are dynamically adjusted according to the current network state, and our results show that it outperforms the fixed grooming policies.