Crosstalk-aware Routing and Spectrum assignment in flexible grid networks

This work presents algorithms for the design phase of flexible grid optical networks considering the impact of in-band channel crosstalk. Due to crosstalk-induced interactions among different connections, malicious high-power signals can potentially spread widely in the network. Moreover, crosstalk interactions also affect the signal quality of transmission. To this end, it is necessary to plan an optical network in a way that the crosstalk effect is minimized. In this work, a novel Routing and Spectrum Allocation (RSA) optimization algorithm based on Integer Linear Programming (ILP) is proposed in order to minimize the impact of the in-band crosstalk effect in flexible grid optical networks through proper utilization of the resources. Additionally, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to handle larger network instances. Performance results indicate that the proposed algorithms perform close to the First Fit spectrum allocation algorithm in terms of total spectrum utilization of the network, while at the same time minimizing the total number of in-band lightpath interactions.