Distributed control based routing and wavelength assignment strategy for WDM optical networks

Wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) is emerging as the dominant technology for the next generation optical networks. The control strategy can be either centralized or distributed. In centralized control, there is a central controller to keep track of the state of the network. It is also responsible for selecting the path for data transmission. Most of the work done in this field is based on centralized control. For large networks, distributed control is preferred over centralized control because of low control overhead. Distributed control strategy requires exchange of control messages among nodes. The distributed control generally results in the possibility of resource reservation conflicts among simultaneous path establishments and poor resource utilization. In this paper, we have proposed one distributed control based routing and wavelength assignment strategy that avoids the problem of resource reservation conflicts along with the efficient utilization of resources.