Load Balancing of Telecommunication Networks based on Multiple Spanning Trees

In this paper we address the problem of load balancing optimization of telecommunication networks based on multiple spanning tree routing. We focus on two objectives – minimization of the maximum link load and minimization of the network utilization imposing a worst case load value – and we propose two sets of mixed integer programming models defining the optimization problems (where one set is derived from the other). We further propose three decompositions (based on the Dantzig-Wolfe principle) to be applied to the models, as alternative means to solve the same problems. A set of computational results show the efficiency of the different models and decompositions.