Considering linear and nonlinear impairmentsin planning WDM networks

In this chapter we study the planning (offline) problem in WDM networks. In such networks, the signal quality of transmission (QoT) degrades due to physical-layer impairments, making necessary the use of regeneration at some intermediate nodes for certain lengthy lightpaths. Because of physical effects, routing choices made for one lightpath affect and are affected by the choices made for the other lightpaths. This interference among the lightpaths is particularly difficult to formulate in a planning algorithm, since in this version of the problem, we start without any established connections, and the utilization of lightpaths is the variable of the problem. We present a way to formulate inter-lightpath interference as additional constraints on the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem. We initially present algorithms to solve the problem of planning a transparent all-optical WDM network, that is, a WDM network without regeneration capability. Then, we turn our attention to translucent WDM optical networks and present a series of algorithms that choose the regeneration sites and the number of regenerators required on these sites, solving the regenerator placement and the RWA problem for a given set of requested connections.