QoS aware routing and wavelength allocation in optical burst switching networks using differential evolution optimization

The issue of burst losses imposes a constraint on the development of Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks. Heavy burst losses strongly affect the Quality of Service (QoS) intended by end users. This article presents a QoS aware Routing and Wavelength Allocation (RWA) technique for burst switching in OBS networks. The RWA problem is modeled as a bi-objective Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem, where objective functions are based on minimizing the number of wavelengths used and the number of hops traversed to fulfill the burst transmission requests for a given set of node pairs. The ILP model is solved using a novel approach based on a Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm. Analytical results show that the DE algorithm provides a better performance compared to shortest path routing, which is a widely accepted routing strategy for OBS networks.