Fair QoS-Aware Adaptive Routing and Wavelength Assignment in All-Optical Networks

In all-optical networks with no wavelength conversion, signals must travel on the same wavelength over possibly very long distances. During transmission, the QoS of signals as measured by their Bit Error Rates is degraded not only by the propagation through fibers, but also by small optical leaks from other signals called crosstalk that occur in the nodes and cannot be removed at the physical layer. We present a set of Routing and Wavelength Assignment algorithms that mitigate the crosstalk effects on all-optical network operation. These algorithms incorporate QoS information at both the routing and the wavelength assignment steps and account for dynamic crosstalk to yield better performance in terms of average BER and fairness among network users without sacrificing blocking probabilities, as shown through simulation.