A Memetic based Approach for Routing and Wavelength Assignment in Optical Transmission Systems

In optical networks, Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) problem is one of the major optimization problems. This problem can be solved by different algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), etc. Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm (SFLA) is implemented in the proposed work, to solve the RWA problem in long-haul optical networks. The goal is to use minimum number of wavelengths and to reduce the number of connection request rejections. Cost, number of wavelengths, hop count and blocking probability are the performance metrics considered in the analysis. Various wavelength assignment methods such as first fit, random, round robin, wavelength ordering and Four Wave Mixing (FWM) priority based wavelength assignment are used in the analysis using SFLA. Number of wavelengths, hop count, cost and setup time are included in the fitness function. The SFLA algorithm proposed, has been analyzed for different network loads and compared with the performance of genetic algorithm.