Regenerator site selection in mixed line rate waveband optical networks

Optical networks that support mixed line rates can accommodate diverse connection requests without the need for traffic grooming by assigning the appropriate line rates to match the bandwidth requirements of requests. Higher line rates offer the advantage of a lower per-unit cost of transmission but may suffer from more impairments compared to lower line rates. These impairments result in shorter optical reach for high line rate signals, necessitating the use of electronic regenerators to restore the signal quality. We formulate the regenerator site selection problem as an integer linear program and propose heuristics to solve the design problem in the context of waveband optical networks. We propose four heuristics and study the effect of regenerator site selection on the number of optical switch ports in waveband networks and the electronic cost.