Performance of multiobjective computational intelligence algorithms for the routing and wavelength assignment problem

Abstract

This paper presents an evaluation performance of computational intelligence algorithms based on the multiobjective theory for the solution of the Routing and Wavelength Assignment problem (RWA) in optical networks. The study evaluates the Firefly Algorithm, the Differential Evolutionary Algorithm, the Simulated Annealing Algorithm and two versions of the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. The paper provides a description of the multiobjective algorithms; then, an evaluation based on the performance provided by the multiobjective algorithms versus mono-objective approaches when dealing with different traffic loads, different number of wavelengths and wavelength conversion process over the NSFNet topology is presented. Simulation results show that monoobjective algorithms properly solve the RWA problem for low values of data traffic and low number of wavelengths. However, the multiobjective approaches adapt better to online traffic when the number of wavelengths available in the network increases as well as when wavelength conversion is implemented in the nodes.