The Global Packing Number for an Optical Network

The global packing number problem arises from the investigation of optimal wavelength allocation in an optical network that employs Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM). Consider an optical network that is represented by a connected, simple graph $G$. We assume all communication channels are bidirectional, so that all links and paths are undirected. It follows that there are ${|G|\choose 2}$ distinct node pairs associated with $G$, where $|G|$ is the number of nodes in $G$. A path system $\mathcal{P}$ of $G$ consists of ${|G|\choose 2}$ paths, one path to connect each of the node pairs. The global packing number of a path system $\mathcal{P}$, denoted by $\Phi(G,\mathcal{P})$, is the minimum integer $k$ to guarantee the existence of a mapping $\omega:\mathcal{P}\to\{1,2,\ldots,k\}$, such that $\omega(P)\neq\omega(P')$ if $P$ and $P'$ have common edge(s). The global packing number of $G$, denoted by $\Phi(G)$, is defined to be the minimum $\Phi(G,\mathcal{P})$ among all possible path systems $\mathcal{P}$. If there is no wavelength conversion along any optical transmission path for any node pair in the network, the global packing number signifies the minimum number of wavelengths required to support simultaneous communication for all pairs in the network. In this paper, the focus is on ring networks, so that $G$ is a cycle. Explicit formulas for the global packing number of a cycle is derived. The investigation is further extended to chain networks. A path system, $\mathcal{P}$, that enjoys $\Phi(G,\mathcal{P})=\Phi(G)$ is called ideal. A characterization of ideal path systems is also presented. We also describe an efficient heuristic algorithm to assign wavelengths that can be applied to a general network with more complicated traffic load.