Impairment-Aware Routing for OBS and OPS Networks

Summary form only given. Although one of the key benefits of all-optical transport networks is the transparency to bit-rate, protocol or modulation format, this is also one of the main obstacles when determining an optimum path through the network. An optical wavelength, burst or packet will accumulate different physical impairments as it is switched through the network these will be imposed by both the transmission links and optical switching nodes. The performance penalty due to the different optical impairments will depend on many factors including the payload bit-rate, modulation format and electronic processing within the receiver. Incorporating these factors in a software-based routing and wavelength assignment algorithm (as can be done for OWS networks) is not feasible for OBS/OPS networks. This paper presents a method of using a combination of vector manipulation and digital hardware to enable on-the-fly impairment-aware routing in such networks