Topological Design of the Wavelength-Division Optical Network

The two-fold purpose of our research is to develop mathematical programming tools for the optimal or near-optimal design of a new type of network architecture called the Wavelength-Division Optical Network (WON) and to discover underlying design principles for such networks via experimentation using these tools. The WON, a multichannel, multihop lightwave network with tunable transceivers, is suitable for use as a metropolitan area network. A unique feature of the WON is that a great number of virtual topologies can be mapped onto a given physical topology. The specific goal of this paper is to describe the problems of virtualand physical-topology design in the WON, present techniques for their solution, and study the interplay between these problems.