Optimizing Performance of Communication Networks: An Application of Network Science

For efficient and reliable data transmission, the traffic load should be as uniformly distributed as possible in the network, and the average distance traveled by the data should be short. This criterion has been shown to be fundamental. The key design problem is therefore to find the optimal solution that achieves this criterion. With a fixed network topology, the traffic load distribution and the transmission efficiency are determined by the specific routing algorithm. In this brief, we apply a simulated annealing algorithm to find the near optimal configuration of routing paths, which effectively balances traffic loads and improves the overall traffic performance.