Efficient algorithms for wavelength assignment on trees of rings Original Research Article

A fundamental problem in communication networks is wavelength assignment (WA): given a set of routing paths on a network, assign a wavelength to each path such that the paths with the same wavelength are edge-disjoint, using the minimum number of wavelengths. The WA problem is NP-hard for a tree of rings network which is well used in practice. In this paper, we give an efficient algorithm which solves the WA problem on a tree of rings with an arbitrary (node) degree using at most image wavelengths and achieves an approximation ratio of 2.75 asymptotically, where image is the maximum number of paths on any link in the network. The image upper bound is tight since there are instances of the WA problem that require image wavelengths even on a tree of rings with degree four. We also give a image and 2-approximation (resp. 2.5-approximation) algorithm for the WA problem on a tree of rings with degree at most six (resp. eight). Previous results include: image (resp. image) wavelengths for trees of rings with arbitrary degrees (resp. degree at most eight), and 2-approximation (resp. 2.5-approximation) algorithm for trees of rings with degree four (resp. six).