Multicast Traffic Grooming in Sparse Splitting WDM Mesh Networks

Abstract

With the growing popularity of multicast applications and the recognition of the potential achievable efficiency gain of the traffic grooming, we face the challenge of optimizing the design of WDM optical networks with sparse splitting multicast traffic grooming. Efficiently grooming low speed connections onto a high capacity wavelength channel can significantly improve the bandwidth utilization in an optical network. In this study, we investigate the problem of sub-wavelength traffic grooming in a WDM optical networks and shows how to take the advantages of multicast capable nodes in grooming these sub-wavelength traffic. The problem of constructing optimal multicast routing trees and grooming their traffics in WDM optical mesh networks is NP-hard. Therefore, we propose an heuristic approach to solve the problem in an efficient manner. The main objective of this paper is to maximize the bandwidth utilization and simultaneously minimize the wavelength usage in a sparse splitting optical network. The problem is mathematically formulated. We have simulated the proposed heuristic approach Multicast Sparse Splitting Traffic Grooming (MSSTG) with different network topologies and compared the performance with Multicast Traffic Grooming with Shortest Path (MTG-SP) algorithm. The simulation results shows that the proposed approach produces better result than existing MTG-SP algorithm.