On the Efficiency of a Game Theoretic Approach to Sparse Regenerator Placement in WDM Networks

In this paper we provide a mathematical ILP model for the Regeneration Placement Problem (RPP) which minimizes the total number of regeneration nodes allocated in a translucent optical network ensuring that all the node pairs can always reach one another via two link-disjoint lightpaths under physical-impairment constraints. Since RPP is NP-complete, large-site design problem can not be solved relying upon exact approaches. We then propose a game-theoretic approach to model RPP as a non-cooperative game and solve it applying the best response dynamic concept. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed approach in terms of closeness of the obtained results to these provided by ILP: a MILP formulation is given in order to study the quality of the Nash equilibria by comparison to Price-of-Anarchy and Price-of-Stability bounds.