Network coding can improve the optical multicast routing performance in terms of network throughput, bandwidth utilization, and traffic load balance. But network coding needs high encoding operations costs in all-optical WDM networks due to shortage of optical RAM. In the paper, the network coding operation is defined to evaluate the number of network coding operation cost in the paper. An optical multicast routing algorithm based on minimal number of network coding operations is proposed to improve the multicast capacity. Two heuristic criteria are designed to establish the multicast routing with low network coding cost and high multicast capacity. One is to select one path from the formerKshortest paths with the least probability of dropping the multicast maximal capacity. The other is to select the path with lowest potential coding operations with the highest link shared degree among the multiple wavelength disjoint paths cluster from source to each destination. Comparing with the other multicast routing based on network coding, simulation results show that the proposed multicast routing algorithm can effectively reduce the times of network coding operations, can improve the probability of reaching multicast maximal capacity, and can keep the less multicast routing link cost for optical WDM networks.
An Optical Multicast Routing with Minimal Network Coding Operations in WDM Networks