Cluster optimization for building all-optical wide area networks

An all-optical networking solution for building a wide area network has been recently proposed. The solution is based on the idea of grouping electronic edge nodes into source and destination clusters and interconnecting these clusters in the optical domain by associating one wavelength channel to each source-destination cluster pair. In this paper, we propose a procedure that allows to build node clusters taking into account the physical topology and specific traffic constraints. The objective is to minimize the number of clusters in the network and, with it, the number of required wavelength channels. We propose an algorithm derived from an exact combinatorial optimization method as well as a heuristic. We compare the proposed algorithms to the exact formulation of the optimization problem and show that our algorithms have excellent performance in terms of convergence time and quality of the solutions.