Multicast dynamic traffic grooming using bin packing method in WDM mesh networks Ashok Kumar Pradhan n , Saurav Singhi, Tanmay De National Institute of Technology, NIT, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Durgapur, India article info Article history: Received 2 February 2016 Received in revised form 25 July 2016 Accepted 25 August 2016 Available online 28 August 2016 Keywords: Bin packing Light-tree Lightpath Multicast Traffic Grooming Splitter Transceivers Wavelength Division Multiplexing abstract With the development of multimedia services in Internet technology, there comes a big gap between bandwidth utilization and the blocking probability for multicast requests in the optical wavelength di- vision multiplexing (WDM) networks. The objective of the proposed approach is to minimize the number of requests blocked in a dynamic multicast optical networks by minimizing the total resources (such as transceivers, splitters and wavelengths) used by the requests and simultaneously increase the bandwidth utilization. Since there are multiple wavelengths on a WDM optical fiber of fixed capacities, minimizing the number of wavelengths to be used is a variation of the bin packing problem. In the bin packing problem, multicast requests of different granularities or subwavelengths must be packed into a finite number of wavelength channels, in such a fashion that it minimizes the number of wavelengths used. In computational complexity theory, it is a combinatorial NP-hard problem. Therefore, we propose two heuristic approaches that provide the efficient resource utilization. These algorithms are called Multicast Traffic Grooming with Bin packing Best-Fit (MTG-BBF) and Multicast Traffic Grooming with Bin packing First-Fit (MTG-BFF). Both the algorithms are derived from standard Bin pack heuristic approach and we map our problem with such kind of approach. Our simulations demonstrated that both the algorithms significantly reduce the blocking probability (BP) compared to well known existing algorithms and MTG- BFF produces slightly better performance than MTG-BBF in the standard networks. & 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In wavelength routed WDM networks, all-optical communica- tion channels between end nodes referred to as lightpaths which can be established with the help of optical cross-connects (OXCs) [1]. A lightpath [2] is an all-optical communication channel that passes through all intermediate nodes between a source and a single destination without Optical-Electrical-Optical(OEO) con- version. A light-tree [3] is an all optical channel between a single source and multiple destinations. Like the lightpath, there is no OEO conversion at any intermediate node on a light-tree. A light- tree/lightpath may span several physical links and if no wave- length converter is utilized, it has to be provisioned with the same wavelength along its route, which is known as the wavelength continuity constraint [4]. In a light-tree, if an optical signal of a node is split into two or more lightwave signals of the same wa- velength on a particular node, then that node is known as multi- cast capable (MC) node or optical splitting node [5]. Multicast traffic from a single source to many destinations follows a tree topology. Therefore, in multicast applications, it is natural that an extension of the lightpath concept called light-tree can sig- nificantly improve the efficiency of a network. Multicasting in optical WDM networks become more popular to achieve the high speed and reliable communication with as- signing the light-tree from a single source to multiple destinations for each multicast request. However, most of the multicast re- quests are low-speed traffic having bandwidth (e.g., OC-1, OC-3, OC-12 or OC-48) which is far less than the wavelength channel capacity (e.g., OC-192 or OC-768). The huge difference between the bandwidth granularities of multicast requests and wavelength channel capacity leads to a wastage of resources like optical transceivers, wavelengths and splitters in the networks, if we as- sign a individual light-tree to each multicast request. Again, more resources consumption lead to a higher blocking probability, since the new multicast requests arriving in the network has limited resources to use. Therefore, it is essential to groom or multiplex such low speed traffic requests onto a high bandwidth channel to improve the resource utilization. Hence, the technology that is used to improve the resource utilization and simultaneously minimize the blocking probability or maximize the bandwidth utilization of the network is known as traffic grooming [2,6]. In Multicast Traffic Grooming, a lot of low-speed traffic requests can be groomed onto a few of high-speed light-trees, so that huge Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/osn Optical Switching and Networking http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.osn.2016.08.004 1573-4277/& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. Optical Switching and Networking 23 (2017) 40–51