Full Design of Robust Optical Networks

We present here a full multifibre optical WDM network design problem formulated as an integer linear problem. The design problem consists in laying out ducts, fibres, routes, and wavelengths, given a set of nodes, the duct and fibre prices, and the traffic demands. We compare different methods for solving the design problem. These are integer linear programming, simulated annealing, and simulated allocation. We find that integer linear programming is useful for benchmarking other algorithms on small networks that consist of less than 7 nodes. For larger networks that cannot be handled by integer linear program solvers, we find that simulated allocation is more promising than simulated annealing. Further we include path protection in the problem formulation and solution.