Multichannel Optical Networks

The huge bandwidth of optical fiber was recognized back in the 1970s during the early development of fiber optics technology. For the last two decades, the capacity of experimental and deployed systems has been increasing at a rate of 100-fold each decade - a rate exceeding the increase of integrated circuit speeds. Today, optical communication in the public communication networks has developed from the status of a curiosity into being the dominant technology. Various great challenges arising from the deployment of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) have attracted much effort from many researchers. Indeed, optical networking has been a fertile ground for both theoretical research and experimental studies. This monograph presents contributions from the author's past and ongoing research in the field of optical networking. The ideas presented focus more on graph-theoretical and algorithmic aspects of optical networks. Although this book is limited to the author's own research, there are many outstanding achievements made by other individuals which are cited throughout. Without the inspiration of their efforts, this monograph would never have been possible. Audience: Research workers and professionals from mathematics, computer science, and engineering with an interest in algorithms, graph theory, telecommunications, networking and optical devices.