Traffic-partitioning approaches to grooming ring access networks

Feature Isue on Optical Access Networks (OAN) As networks have evolved in sophistication, the twin concerns of quality-of-service (QoS) and efficiency have propagated down the hierarchical levels of networking and are now considered important in access networks as well. Motivated by these two concerns, researchers have recognized traffic grooming as an increasingly important area in optical networking in recent years. Very recently, a min-max approach to network cost optimization has emerged as a new focus area. In this approach, the maximum electronic-switching capability at any network node is sought to be minimized. In this paper, we propose heuristics for traffic grooming with this objective in ring networks, which are of practical importance, especially in access network architectures. We advance two approaches, both based on the concept of partitioning the traffic matrix, but in different ways. The approaches are of complementary strength, being useful for different traffic patterns. We present numerical results validating the performance of the algorithms.