An adaptive routing strategy for wavelength-routed networks with wavelength conversion capability

We investigate adaptive routing in wavelength-routed networks. Exploiting the concept of load balancing, we propose an adaptive routing strategy named weighted-shortest-cost-path (WSCP). The salient feature of WSCP is that it seeks the path that minimizes the resource cost while simultaneously maintaining the traffic load as balanced as possible. We compare the blocking probability and average hops of WSCP with those of the traditional shortest-cost-path (SCP) strategy, fixed routing, and alternate routing. The numerical results show that WSCP can enhance blocking performance and lengthen hop distances just a little. The improvement is more significant in denser networks or with more wavelengths. We also develop an analytical model to estimate blocking performance of WSCP.