Dynamic multicast traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks

Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is an important technique for next-generation networks, which offers a viable solution to fully exploit the enormous bandwidth available in fiber optics. Optical layer multicast refers to the support of point-to-multipoint connections directly at the physical layer by employing passive devices known as power splitters. Since the bandwidth requirement of an individual user is only a fraction of optical channel capacity, the problem of traffic grooming is a crucial constituent in designing WDM networks. This paper investigates the problem of dynamic multicast traffic grooming in WDM mesh networks. A novel efficient light-tree based integrated grooming (LTIG) algorithm is proposed and simulation results show that LTIG has low blocking probability and good network resource utilization under the constraints of wavelength continuity and limited wavelength and transceiver resources.