An Algorithm for Traffic Grooming in WDM Optical Mesh Networks with Multiple Objectives

This paper studies a traffic grooming in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) mesh networks for the SONET/SDH streams requested between node pairs. The traffic could be groomed at the access node before converting to an optical signal carried in the all-optical network. We design a virtual topology with a given physical topology to satisfy multiple objectives and constraints. The grooming problem of a static demand is considered as an optimization problem. The traditional algorithms found in the literatures mostly focus on a single objective either to maximize the performance or to minimize the cost. We propose a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to solve a grooming problem that optimizes multiple objectives all together at the same time. In this paper we consider the optimization of three objectives: maximize the traffic throughput, minimize the number of transceivers, and minimize the average propagation delay or average hop counts. The simulation results show that our approach is superior to an existing heuristic approaches in an acceptable running time.