A comparative study of cost effective multiplexing approaches in optical networks

In this paper, we describe a framework for exploring various multiplexing approaches in optical networks and evaluating their cost-effectiveness. A comprehensive comparative study of two representative approaches, known as path multiplexing (PM) and link multiplexing (LM), is conducted with respect to on-line permutation scheduling. It is found that in many networks, PM is nearly as effective as LM in that they require about the same number of virtual channels (e.g. wavelengths, time slots etc.) to make a network wide-sense nonblocking. And that they require about the same number of rounds to schedule a permutation on average in a blocking network.