Optimal path determination in a survivable virtual topology of an optical network using ant colony optimization

Abstract

In optical networks the terminals are connected by higher bandwidth fibers. For effective use of bandwidth the capacity of these optical fibers is divided into several channels. Any damage to an optical fiber will affect the data communication on the associated channels ultimately results in data loss between the terminals. Therefore a survivable virtual mapping is required over the physical topology which can still connect the terminals in case of a link failure. Here popular ant colony optimization is used to determine the optimal paths in a survivable virtual topology. Simulation studies on a five node and a ten node network reveal the determination of virtual optimal path between all the nodes considering link-cost and hop-count. The computational time required to establish communication between the nodes of these networks using the real physical link and proposed virtual link are reported. It is observed that though the virtual connection take either equal or more time than the physical link, it can able to establish the connection even in case of any physical link failure.