Virtual source based multicast routing in WDM optical networks

This paper concerns with the problem of optical multicast routing in WDM networks. A few nodes in the network may have wavelength conversion and/or splitting capabilities. A new multicast tree construction algorithm is proposed, based on a concept called the virtual source. A virtual source is a node having both the splitting and wavelength conversion capabilities. By exploiting the presence of virtual source nodes, the proposed algorithm achieves improved performance. To further improve the performance, the algorithm assigns priorities to nodes based on their capabilities. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified through extensive simulation experiments.