Light-hierarchy: the optimal structure for multicast routing in WDM mesh networks

Based on the false assumption that multicast incapable (MI) nodes could not be traversed twice on the same wavelength, the light-tree structure was always thought to be optimal for multicast routing in sparse splitting Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks. In fact, for establishing a multicast session, an MI node could be crosswise visited more than once to switch a light signal towards several destinations with only one wavelength through different input and output pairs. This is called Cross Pair Switching (CPS). Thus, a new multicast routing structure light-hierarchy is proposed for alloptical multicast routing, which permits the cycles introduced by the CPS capability of MI nodes. We proved that the optimal structure for minimizing the cost of multicast routing is a set of light-hierarchies rather than the light-trees in sparse splitting WDM networks. Integer linear programming (ILP) formulations are developed to search the optimal light-hierarchies. Numerical results verified that the light-hierarchy structure could save more cost than the light-tree structure.