Metaheuristic Approaches for Designing Survivable Fiber-Optic Networks

During the last years Fiber-optic based communication networks have become affordable for individual households. Due to the costly nature of the materials and infrastructure that have to be deployed to distribute such a network over a large area, exact algorithms for cal- culating a provably optimal cable routing are desirable. However, due to the computational complexity of the problem, such algorithms are not always able to determine an optimal solution within acceptable time. Heuristics and metaheuristics can provide techniques to calculate approximate solutions that are often sufficient as a starting point for certain, more time-consuming approaches, or even sufficient for practical purposes. During the last years Fiber-optic based communication networks have become affordable for individual households. Due to the costly nature of the materials and infrastructure that have to be deployed to distribute such a network over a large area, exact algorithms for calculating a provably optimal cable routing are desirable. However, due to the computational complexity of the problem, such algorithms are not always able to determine an optimal solution within acceptable time. Heuristics and metaheuristics can provide techniques to calculate approximate solutions that are often sufficient as a starting point for certain, more time-consuming approaches, or even sufficient for practical purposes.