DCM selection on an optical line system

We consider a dispersion compensation module (DCM) selection problem for an optical line system in DWDM networks. The objective is to choose DCMs along the equipment of a line system to yield the most desired dispersion map. We present three approaches; (i) integer programming, (ii) dynamic programming, and (iii) a heuristic method. The first two approaches guarantee optimal solutions but may not be scalable either in computing time and/or in memory usage. The third approach often works well in practice though it does not guarantee optimality.