Routing, baud rate, code, modulation level, and spectrum assignment in elastic optical networks: a genetic algorithms approach

Abstract

The Routing, Code, Baud rate, Modulation Level, and Spectrum Assignment (RBCMLSA) problem is critical in Elastic Optical Networks (EON). Literature reports solutions based on Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and heuristic techniques. However, when the complexity of the problem increases, the first technique becomes a non-scalable solution, while the second is inefficient. As an alternative, this work proposes two techniques based on Genetic Algorithms (GA): (1) a routing-based GA and (2) a permutation-based GA. The GAs seek a solution that minimizes the used spectrum subject to optical layer constraints. Numerical simulations perform the proposed GAs and the state-of-the-art (ILP and heuristic) under static traffic in several traffic loads and network scenarios. The simulation results in the considered instances show that the proposed GAs are competitive obtaining quality results close to the ILP approach with a reasonable computational time. Even more, the route-based GA incurs in a longer computational time than the permutation-based GA.