Offline Impairment-Aware Routing and Wavelength Assignment Algorithms in Translucent WDM Optical Networks

Physical impairments in optical fiber transmission necessitate the use of regeneration at certain intermediate nodes, at least for certain lengthy lightpaths. We design and implement impairment-aware algorithms for routing and wavelength assignment (IA-RWA) in translucent optical networks. We focus on the offline version of the problem, where we are given a network topology, the number of available wavelengths and a traffic matrix. The proposed algorithm selects the 3R regeneration sites and the number of regenerators that need to be deployed on these sites, solving the regenerator placement problem for the given set of requested connections. The problem can be also posed in a slightly different setting, where a (sparse) placement of regenerators in the network is given as input and the algorithm selects which of the available regenerators to use, solving the regenerator assignment problem. We formulate the problem of regenerator placement and regenerator assignment, as a virtual topology design problem, and address it using various algorithms, ranging from a series of integer linear programming (ILP) formulations to simple greedy heuristic algorithms. Once the sequence of regenerators to be used by the non-transparent connections has been determined, we transform the initial traffic matrix by replacing non-transparent connections with a sequence of transparent connections that terminate and begin at the specified 3R intermediate nodes. Using the transformed matrix we then apply an IA-RWA algorithm designed for transparent (as opposed to translucent) networks to route the traffic. Blocked connections are re-routed using any remaining regenerator(s) in the last phase of the algorithm.