Dispersion optimised impairment constraint based routing and wavelength assignment algorithms for all-optical networks

Current methods in the area of impairment constraint based routing algorithms (ICBRA) lack the capabilities to support information regarding dispersion management. The inclination towards higher bit-rates and heterogeneous optical networks in the future challenges the popular assumption that chromatic dispersion (CD) is adequately compensated on a per-link basis. Recognising the importance of dispersion management, this paper proposes algorithms which apply metrics that contain dispersion information to both the routing and wavelength assignment sub-problems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to include dispersion information within the wavelength assignment sub-problem. The newly proposed algorithm is named dispersion optimised impairment constraint-based RWA (DOIC). The performance is compared to existing routing and wavelength techniques under two scenarios: 40 Gb/s and mixed 10 Gb/s/40 Gb/s services. Two physical impairments under investigation are chromatic dispersion (CD) and optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR