A survey on physical layer impairments aware routing and wavelength assignment algorithms in optical networks

1389-1286/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2008.11.014 * Corresponding author. Address: Athens Informat Markopoulo Ave., 19002 Peania, Athens, Greece. Te E-mail addresses: [email protected], siamak@ac. molky), [email protected] (M. Klinkowski), Marin), [email protected] (D. Careglio), pareta@ac [email protected] (I. Tomkos). Optical networks are moving from opaque and translucent architectures towards all-optical (transparent) architectures. In translucent architectures a small amount of regeneration (e.g. optical–electronic–optical conversion) is available in the network. The incorporation of the physical impairments in the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem in transparent optical networks has recently received some attention from the research communities. This work compiles a comprehensive survey of the proposed algorithms that address this issue. The physical layer impairments and related classification in optical networks are initially presented followed by physical layer impairments (PLI) constrained and aware RWA algorithms. Algorithmic approach, current PLI-RWA proposals, impact of wavelength conversion on these algorithms, protection and resilience considerations, and proposed extensions to control planes are covered in this work. Further research topics are presented in this study. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.