Minimizing the cost of placing and sizing wavelength division multiplexing and optical crossconnect equipment in a telecommunications network

Cost reduction is a major concern when designing optical fiber networks. Multiwavelength optical devices are new technology for increasing the capacity of fiber networks while reducing costs, when compared to installing traditional (e.g., SONET) equipment and new fiber. In this article we discuss the development of a metaheuristic method that seeks to optimize the location of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Optical Crossconnect (OXC) equipment in fiber networks. The procedure combines ideas from the scatter search, tabu search, and multistart methodologies. Computational experiments with both real-world and artificial data show the effectiveness of the proposed procedure. The experiments include a comparison with a permutation-based approach and with lower bounds generated with CPLEX.