Multicast routing, load balancing, and wavelength assignment on tree of rings

There are two steps to establish a multicast connection in WDM networks: routing and wavelength assignment. The shortest path tree (SPT) and minimum spanning tree (MST) are the two widely used multicast routing methods. The SPT method minimizes the delay from the source to every destination along a routing tree, and the MST method is often used to minimize the network cost of the tree. Load balancing is an important objective in multicast routing, which minimizes the maximal link load in the system. The objective of wavelength assignment is to minimize the number of wavelengths used in the system. This paper analyzes the performance of the shortest path tree (SPT) and minimum spanning tree (MST) methods in the tree of ring networks, regarding the performance criteria such as the delay and network cost of the generated routing trees, load balancing, and the number of wavelengths required in the system. We prove that SPT and MST methods can not only produce routing trees with low network costs and short delays, but also have good competitive ratios for the load balancing problem (LBP) and wavelength assignment problem (WAP), respectively.