Impairment-aware based routing and wavelength assignment for all-optical networks

In transparent WDM networks, the optical signal crosses various equipments (cross-connect, amplifiers and sub-fibre) and while the signal is propagated, the optical components causes their degradation. Thus, paths with low quality signal should be avoided, especially when the application requires quality of service (QoS). In this context, an appropriate allocation of resources requires encompassing physical impairments in the routing and wavelength assigning algorithms. Therefore, this paper investigates the use of physical impairments (Polarization Mode Dispersion and Optical Signal) for the choice of routes and assignment of wavelength (RWA) in WDM networks.