Strategies for Virtual Optical Network Allocation

This paper presents Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulations to optimally allocate Virtual Optical Networks (VONs) over a transparent optical network substrate. These formulations serve the purpose of building either completely transparent VONs or opaque ones, where electrical termination capabilities are assumed at each virtual network node. In addition, a lightweight Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search (GRASP) heuristic is provided for the transparent case. The obtained results validate the accuracy of the proposed heuristic and reveal the benefits of the presented solutions against simpler shortest-path-based VON allocation strategies.