A survey on physical layer impairments aware routing and wavelength assignment algorithms in transparent wavelength routed optical networks
A wavelength-routed optical network consists of a number of cross-connects which are interconnected by optical fibers. Transparent optical networks allow signals to bypass extensive electronic signal processing at intermediate nodes. The quality of an optical signal degrades as it travels though several optical components along its lightpath. It is essential to incorporate imapact of the physical impairments in the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem in transparent optical networks. This work compiles a comprehensive survey, from various research publications, of the proposed algorithms that address this issue. The physical layer impairments classification in optical networks are initially presented followed by physical layer impairments (PLI) RWA algorithms and algorithmic approaches for the PLI-RWA problem. Performance metrics for evaluating the performance of the proposed PLI-RWA algorithms are presented at the end of the work. Further research topics are presented in this study.