Physical-Layer Considerations for The Realistic Deployment of Impairment-Aware Connection Provisioning

Nowadays, impairment-aware connection provisioning is a hot topic due to the evolution of optical networks to all-optical infrastructures and to the need to maintain or enhance Quality of Service (QoS). Most of the research efforts in this field use complex, analytical models of impairments as the basis for the connection provisioning decision. However, these models are not fully feasible in practice due to cost, monitoring limitations and the architectures of impairment-aware Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA). This paper discusses key physical-layer considerations for the realistic deployment of impairment-aware connection provisioning, and provides an example of cost-effective, distributed Impairment-aware RWA (IRWA) in the context of the all- optical ADRENALINE testbed.