Optimal lightpath placement on a metropolitan-area network linked with optical CDMA local nets

A flexible optical metropolitan-area network (OMAN) [J.F. Huang, Y.F. Wang, C.Y. Yeh, Optimal configuration of OCDMA-based MAN with multimedia services, in: 23rd Biennial Symposium on Communications, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, May 29–June 2, 2006, pp. 144–148] structured with OCDMA linkage is proposed to support multimedia services with multi-rate or various qualities of service. To prioritize transmissions in OCDMA, the orthogonal variable spreading factor (OVSF) codes widely used in wireless CDMA are adopted. In addition, for feasible multiplexing, unipolar OCDMA modulation [L. Nguyen, B. Aazhang, J.F. Young, All-optical CDMA with bipolar codes, IEEE Electron. Lett. 31 (6) (1995) 469–470] is used to generate the code selector of multi-rate OMAN, and a flexible fiber-grating-based system is used for the equipment on OCDMA–OVSF code. These enable an OMAN to assign suitable OVSF codes when creating different-rate lightpaths. How to optimally configure a multi-rate OMAN is a challenge because of displaced lightpaths. In this paper, a genetically modified genetic algorithm (GMGA) [L.R. Chen, Flexible fiber Bragg grating encoder/decoder for hybrid wavelength-time optical CDMA, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 13 (11) (2001) 1233–1235] is used to preplan lightpaths in order to optimally configure an OMAN. To evaluate the performance of the GMGA, we compared it with different preplanning optimization algorithms. Simulation results revealed that the GMGA very efficiently solved the problem.