Selective protection for all-optical physical impairment constrained routing

In optical networks, according to the latest tendencies, the goal is to route all demands in all-optical way. However, in the near future, this will still not be possible due to technical constraints and backward compatibility. In the meantime, operators may decide to reserve a given percent of their power budget for all-optical routing, while the rest of the budget is used as it is done now. This introduces a new, additional problem. Namely, operators have to select which demands should be routed in all-optical way. This problem is even more complex for demands that need protection. In this paper, we present methods that may help operators to maximize the number of demands with protection routed in all-optical way. Based on simulations, we show the beneficial properties of the proposed approaches.