A design algorithm for reconfigurable ATM networks

Reconfiguration capability in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks and its ability to reduce ATM cell losses are studied. An implementation that restricts the transmission of ATM cells of an O-D pair to certain channels in each physical link in a simple path from origin to destination is proposed. The joint topology, discrete capacity, and routing problem in a reconfigurable ATM network is formulated as a nonlinear mixed integer programming problem. It is proven that this problem with integrality constraints relaxed can be simplified to a convex programming problem, providing a method for computing a lower bound on the original problem. An algorithm is developed to solve the nonlinear mixed integer programming problem. In computational experiments, the reconfiguration capability decreased the total cell losses by more than 50%