Embedding Multiple-Step-Ahead Traffic Prediction in Network Energy Efficiency Problem

Abstract

Adaptive Link Rate (ALR) is widely used to save energy consumption of network by adjusting the link rate according to the carried traffic through a network-level optimization of the flow allocation process. Existing ALR solution is mainly reactive, in which link speed is changed only when new traffic demand is requested. Also, they focus on energy consumption, and do not consider the cost of changes in the network (e.g., change in traffic routes, and link rates). Once bandwidth has been allocated for a demand, the link rate remains constant during the entire session. Therefore, this solution may result in sub-optimal schemes and requires multiple re-optimizations as traffic flows are fluctuating during the session, hence reducing the overall network performance. In this paper, we improve the ALR with a multiple-step-ahead method to optimize link rates based on forecasting traffic demand predictively. We formulate the proposed Predictive ALR (PALR) as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model and then design a heuristic simulated annealing (SA) -based algorithm to solve it. Our experimental results show our approach provides energy saving while it decreases on average 18% of link state transition and 11% of the flow reroutings compared to the original ALR.