Partially reconfigurable multihop lightwave networks

Within the multihop architecture, each network node is equipped with some small number of transmitters and receivers, each of which can communicate on one wavelength. Transmitters and receivers are connected to an optical medium, which is physical configured in such a way that the entire spectrum of wavelengths in use is potentially accessible by each node. Then, an assignment of transmit and receive wavelengths to each node defines the logical connectivity among nodes. The use of partially agile transceivers provides some ability to update the logical connectivity in response to changing traffic patterns and failure/recovery of nodal transmitters and receivers. The flow and wavelength assignment problem is studied, and solutions are sought which flow the traffic over a derived connectivity diagram such that the largest flow on any link is minimized. Examples of the resulting connectivity diagram and traffic flow are presented for selected nonuniform point to point traffic matrices, and for different ranges of transmitter/receiver tunability