Minimizing Lightpath Set-Up Times in Wavelength Routed All-Optical Networks

Abstract

Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology evolved to effectively utilize the enormous bandwidth of optical fiber. In circuit-switched WDM networks lightpaths are used to transfer data between a given pair of nodes. A lightpath is an all-optical channel established between the given pair of nodes by configuring the Wavelength Routing Switches (WRS) at the intermediate nodes along the path. In a WRS, the time required to reconfigure the switch is often long when compared to the speed of data passing through the switch, and it has significant impact on the performance of the network. In this paper, we present a new technique to mitigate the lightpath set-up time overheads in Dynamic Lightpath Establishment (DLE) algorithms for wavelength continuous circuit switched all-optical networks. Simulation studies indicate that the new technique significantly reduces the number of reconfigurations required to set-up new lightpaths.