In recent years, network evolution is very intensive. New networks emerge, all optical solutions are proposed in the backbone networks, wireless solutions to provide access to users everywhere and to implant sensors / actuators in hostile areas, the Internet of objects, etc. In this evolution, new problems, scientific challenges also keep appearing. Part of the problems is related to the optimization of the used resources, to the improvement of the performance of tools and techniques. Often, these problems lead to optimization in graph models. The optimal solution is required or – in NP-hard cases – approximations that give performance guarantees and / or heuristics easy to use. Analysis of optimization problems in networks is an important activity of the research team. Some of our works aim at route optimization:
- optical routes in all-optical networks to reduce operating costs, to increase the number of accepted communications requests
- routes in wireless ad hoc networks, routes in IoT
- multicast routes for streaming multimedia and for group communication,
- routes to monitor the proper functioning of the networks…
In our approach, identification of combinatorial problems (e.g., the optimum for area coverage, the coverage of a set of elements, the optimal recovery / connection of a set of destinations for multicasting, …) and then searching for advantageous solutions are in the focus.