Physical impairments modeling for the performance evaluation of transparent optical networks

We propose a model to consider several physical impairments in optical networks based on the OSNR. Our model considers the effects of gain saturation and amplified spontaneous emission noise in amplifiers, homodyne crosstalk in optical switches, and four wave mixing in the transmission fibers. We present an application of our model for the evaluation of network performance in terms of blocking probability using a routing and wavelength assignment algorithm. Our results show the impact of each impairment on network performance as a function of device parameters.