Scheduled Virtual Topology Design under periodic traffic in transparent optical networks

This paper investigates offline planning and scheduling in transparent optical networks for a given periodic traffic demand. The main objective is to minimize the number of transceivers needed which make up for the main network cost. We call this problem “Scheduled Virtual Topology Design” and consider two variants: non-reconfigurable and reconfigurable equipment. We formulate both problems as exact MILPs (Mixed Integer Linear Programs). Due to their high complexity, we propose a more scalable tabu search heuristic approach, in conjunction with smaller MILP formulations for the associated subproblems. The main motivation of our research efforts is to assess the benefits of using reconfigurable equipment, realized as a reduction in the number of required transceivers. Our results show that the achieved reductions are not very significant, except for cases with large network loads and high traffic variability.