Energy-aware lightpath routing in optical networks based on adaptive heuristics

Energy-aware lightpath routing and establishment in optical backbone networks can reduce energy consumption. A heuristic method suitable for network's Planning phase, based on Swarm Intelligence and Grooming practices is proposed that reduces the energy footprint by taking advantage of asymmetric bandwidth split across multiple streams routed to the same destination through different paths. The Ant System metaheuris-tic is being utilized for finding the most energy-efficient routes from source node to destination per traffic request. Performance improvement concerning energy dissipation was achieved against competing heuristics and is depicted via simulation results.