Multicast Routing, Modulation Level and Spectrum Assignment in Elastic Optical Networks — A Genetic Algorithm-Based Approach

Abstract

The problem of multicast routing, modulation level, and spectrum assignment is essential for the efficient performance of elastic optical networks. This problem seeks to compute light forests with the least optical network resources to satisfy multicast requests. The proposed strategies in the literature addressed this problem with exact or heuristic techniques, which are suitable when the number of requests is low. Developing scalable and efficient strategies is critical when the problem is complex, therefore, this study proposes a metaheuristic approach based on genetic algorithms. Given a set of multicast requests and a network topology, the proposed approach seeks to compute a set of light forests that minimizes (1) the number of blocked requests, (2) the maximum used frequency slot, and (3) the number of used transponders. Numerical simulations were performed to study the proposed algorithm performance under different static traffic loads and network topologies. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is promising for obtaining competitive solutions in reasonable computational time compared to the competitive heuristic approaches of state-of-the-art.