Scheduling Multicast Packets in Single-Hop WDM Networks

A WDM star coupler network consists of a number of network nodes connected via optical fibers to a passive star coupler. In a single-hop WDM network, a data packet is transmitted from one node to another without going through intermediate nodes. A number of applications require information to be sent to multiple destinations. Therefore, supporting multicast communications is important for communication networks. This paper studies the problem of scheduling multicast packets in singlehop WDM networks. The problem is formulated as an optimization problem and shown to be NP-complete. A new heuristic algorithm is proposed for this problem. Extensive simulations are performed to study the performance of the proposed algorithm.