Energy aware resource allocation for optical grid networks

Energy aware routing schemes for wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks can significantly reduce the overall energy consumption compared to other technologies. Much of the recent work has concentrated on switching off unused network components during low utilization periods. In this study, we present a comprehensive heuristic algorithm that performs routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) and minimizes the overall energy consumption of a set of static light-path demands, using Tabu Search (TS) principle. We consider both unicast and anycast traffic models. Our simulations show that by exploiting the flexibility of anycast routing, the network energy consumption can be reduced significantly compared to energy-aware unicast and energy unaware approaches.