Robust Network Design for Stochastic Traffic Demands

This paper addresses the problem of logical topology design for optical backbone networks subject to stochastic traffic demands. The network design problem is broken into three tasks: traffic routing, capacity allocation, and link placement. While the routing and capacity allocation subproblem can be formulated using convex optimization, the link placement component is prohibitive due to its nonlinearity. To address this issue, we develop a linear formulation for the routing and capacity allocation subproblem by extending tools from robust optimization to Gaussian random variables. We show that this linear formulation performs comparably to the optimal nonlinear formulation. Our formulation can then be used to solve the link-placement subproblem for stochastic traffic.