K-Shortest Paths Q-Routing: A New QoS Routing Algorithm in Telecommunication Networks

Actually, various kinds of sources (such as voice, video, or data) with diverse traffic characteristics and Quality of Service Requirements (QoS), which are multiplexed at very high rates, leads to significant traffic problems such as packet losses, transmission delays, delay variations, etc, caused mainly by congestion in the networks. The prediction of these problems in real time is quite difficult, making the effectiveness of “traditional” methodologies based on analytical models questionable. This article proposed and evaluates a QoS routing policy in packets topology and irregular traffic of communications network called K-shortest paths Q-Routing. The technique used for the evaluation signals of reinforcement is Q-learning. Compared to standard Q-Routing, the exploration of paths is limited to K best non loop paths in term of hops number (number of routers in a path) leading to a substantial reduction of convergence time. Moreover, each router uses an on line learning module to optimize the path in terms of average packet delivery time. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated experimentally with OPNET simulator for different levels of load and compared to Q-Routing algorithm.