Optimization approach for multi-domain optical network provisioning

Multi-domain optical network provisioning is a key focus area as users continue to demand scalable bandwidth services across wider network regions. To date, a range of distributed schemes have been proposed to achieve lightpath routing across domain boundaries. In general, these solutions rely upon hierarchical routing and provisioning strategies and are mostly heuristics based. As such, it is difficult to gauge their true load-carrying capacity and effectiveness. Hence in order to address this concern, this effort proposes a formal optimization-based model for multi-domain lightpath setup pursuant to several key objectives, i.e., including throughput maximization, resource minimization, and load balancing. This model is then solved for some sample network topologies, and the results are compared versus existing heuristic strategies.