All-optical Regenerator Placement in WSON

With the increase of the transmission rates and of the spectral efficiency of the modulation formats, optical signal regeneration is required in few intermediate nodes in Wavelength Switched Optical Networks (WSON). While the problem of placing the opto-electronic regenerator problem has been well studied in the past, with the advent of all-optical regenerators realized with integrated photonic circuits, novel constraints and limitations are introduced into the placement problem. This paper addresses the all-optical regenerator placement (ORP) problem in WSON with guaranteed Quality of Transmission (QoT). A binary linear programming (BLP) formulation is proposed for placing the minimum number of all-optical regenerators, while enforcing the additional constraints arising from the optical regenerator design. Optimal results of the BLP indicate that the additional constraints have a negligible impact on the overall number of regenerators, compared to the case with opto-electronic regenerators.