Design integrated RSA for multicast in elastic optical networks with a layered approach

In this paper, we incorporate a layered approach to design integrated multicast-capable routing and spectrum assignment (MC-RSA) algorithms for achieving efficient all-optical multicasting in spectrum-sliced elastic optical networks (EONs), which are based on the optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (O-OFDM) technology. For each multicast request, the proposed algorithms decompose the physical topology into several layered auxiliary graphs according to the network spectrum utilization. Then, based on the request´s bandwidth requirement, we select a proper layer and calculate a multicast light-tree within it. With these procedures, the routing and spectrum assignment (RSA) for each multicast request is done in an integrated way. We evaluate the proposed algorithms in simulations of static network planning and dynamic network provisioning. The simulation results demonstrate that compared to the existing MC-RSA algorithms, our approaches achieve more efficient network planning in terms of spectrum utilization, and provide lower blocking probabilities in network provisioning.