Resource and load aware mapping algorithm for elastic optical network

Abstract

To improve the efficiency of network, virtualization has developed by sharing the same physical network’s resources for different users and applications. As one of the substrate networks, elastic optical network (EON) is expected to be used for the virtualization due to its flexibility and effectiveness. In this letter, we propose a virtual network mapping algorithm called resource and load aware algorithm based on ant colony optimization (RL-ACO), which considers the load jointly with spectrum continuity and spectrum contiguity during the node mapping stage. The variation of node availability rank is defined in the process of link mapping which helps to decrease the blocking ratio of virtual network requests. Simulation results show that RL-ACO not only reduces the blocking probability and the occupied frequency slots, but also balances the link load.