A Location-Routing Problem in Designing the Optical Internet

with WDM Systems

Youngho Lee, Seungjun Lee, Seong-in Kim
Department of Industrial Systems and Information Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.


Keywords: Optical Internet, WDM systems, Branch-and-Cut, Tabu search, Location-Routing,
Multi-commodity flow.

1. Introduction

In this talk, we consider a location-routing problem in designing the optical Internet with WDM systems.
This problem arises from the design of broadband local access networks that deliver high-speed access
service to residential subscribers. In this problem, we consider fiber routing and gateway location. For
routing problem, we determine the optimal dimensioning of link capacity, and seek to find the fiber routing
of traffic between demand node and gateway node. In the optical Internet architecture of this talk, we
consider WDM systems as a viable means to increase capacity. Couple with fiber routing problem, we
address the optimal location problem of the gateway for minimizing the total cost of routing and WDM
systems.

This problem would be solved as the subproblem of the multi-period network planning problem faced by
network planners at telecommunications company. To solve the large-scale problems, network planners
estimate the cost of building new networks under a variety of conditions involving different demand
patterns and WDM cost. Such studies may require solving iteratively a series of related network design
problems. And solving this problem many times without consumption of too much computation time is
very important. Furthermore, given the significant cost of the WDM equipments, it is also crucial to have
the optimality guarantee of solutions for solving real-world problems. To provide the optimality guarantee,
we develop a strong formulation that generates a tighter lower bound for the problem. Then, we get some
useful constructs for the heuristic, by exploiting the special structure of the proposed strong formulation.

The location-routing problem is similar to the well known bandwidth packing problem (BWP). The BWP is
to find a solution of maximizing the total revenue from the routed calls when each call has a given revenue
and requires a nonnegative bandwidth in a capacitated arc graph. Anderson, et al [1], and Laguna et al. [2]
developed a tabu search heuristic algorithm to solve the BWP, and Laguna et al. [2] suggested an integer
programming formulation and solved some instances by using commercial package. In the BWP, the
location of the gateway is fixed, while the location of the gateway in our problem is determined by
considering the total cost of fiber routing and WDM systems.

2. Solution Procedures

We develop two alternate formulations for the problem: a path model and a multi-commodity flow model.
The path model has been explored extensively for the last ten years in the BWP. It has been known that the
path model is more effective than the multi-commodity flow model because the path model provides strong
lower bounds, which in turn reduce the effort of the branch-and-bound. However, in this talk, we
demonstrate that the augmented multi-commodity flow model with strong valid inequalities provides
competitive lower bounds. With the tight lower bound of the LP relaxation of the model, we develop a
branch-and-cut algorithm. Then, by using the inherent special structure of the problem, we propose an
effective tabu search heuristic algorithm.

Recently, in solving the classical location-routing problem of trucking company, Tuzun et al. [3] proposed
a sequential two-phase tabu search algorithm that first determines the location of depot and then finds a
routing of vehicle for a given location of the depot. Since the overall cost of routing depends on the
location of the gateway, the quality of the proposed sequential method could be extremely poor in some
problem instances. However, in this paper, we develop an effective tabu search algorithm with various long
term memory strategies for simultaneously solving location and routing problems.

First, we devise a simple greedy algorithm for an initial solution. In this algorithm, we find a minimum cost
path for each demand to the candidate gateway. Then, a set of gateways are selected in a greedy fashion.
Then, we rearrange the path for each demand by iteratively swapping gateways.

For the description of our tabu search algorithm, let a WDM link be an edge that deploys a WDM
equipment and a WDM forest be a set of the WDM links which are connected. Then, we define two moves
of our tabu search algorithm: WDM link move and gateway swapping move. The WDM link move changes
the member of a WDM forest by deleting a WDM link of low utilization and by adding one that is
promising and not prohibited by tabu memory. Since WDM equipments are expensive, this move improves
the quality of the solution. Note that the number of edges in a WDM forest does not change after the move.
Next, we allow an infeasible solution in the swapping move of gateways, which hopefully improves the
chance of recovering better feasible solutions in the later phase of the tabu search.

The frequency that each location is selected as a candidate location and the frequency of the edge used as
WDM link are monitored during the normal phase. Then, we use the frequency information for
intensification and diversification phases of the proposed tabu search. In the intensification phase, we select
some of the locations which are frequently selected as candidate locations. Then, with these locations, we
examine various routing solutions intensively. Note, however, that the WDM link information is used as
the tabu memory during this phase. But, in the diversification phase, we include the least used location as
the candidate location and it enables the exploration of unvisited solution space. In our tabu search
algorithm, we apply a longer tabu tenure for the normal edges than for the WDM link.

3. Computational Results

We have tested the proposed algorithm for various problem instances. For a real network topology of 50
nodes and 133 edges, problem instance are generated with different parameters of the cost for WDM and
routing. From our computation results, we observed that our tabu search algorithm provides optimal or near
optimal solutions in many problem instances.

References

[1] Anderson A., K. Fraughnaugh, M. Parker, J. Ryan, Path assignment for call routing: An application of
tabu search, Annals of Operation Research, Vol. 41, 1993.
[2] Laguna, M., F. Glover, Bandwidth packing: a tabu search approach, Management Science, Vol. 39,
No. 1, 1993.
[3] Tuzun D., L. I. Burke, A two-phase tabu search approach to the location routing problem, European
Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 116, pp.8799, 1999.