Optical Communications Minimisation of end-to-end delay in reconfigurable WDM networks using genetic algorithms

A new genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to design logical topologies for wavelength-routed optical networks (WRONs) with the objective of minimising the end-to-end delay. Two versions of the algorithm, called D-GALD (Delay-optimised Genetic Algorithm for Logical topology Design), have been developed. The first one minimises the average end-to-end delay of the packets transported by the network, while the second one minimises the average delay of the most delayed traffic flow. By means of a simulation study, we show that the logical topologies designed by D-GALD support more than 50 per cent higher traffic load—without causing network instability—than those ones designed by other heuristics. Moreover, the utilisation of D-GALD leads to reductions of up to 15 per cent in the average end-to-end delay and around 30 per cent in the average end-to-end delay of the most delayed traffic flow. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.