The field of robotics has advanced to the point where robots are being developed for use in fire environments to perform firefighting tasks. These environments contain varying levels of fire and smoke, both of which obstruct robotic perception sensors. In order to effectively use robots in fire environments, the issue of perception in the presence of smoke and fire needs to be addressed. The goal of this research was to address the problem of perception, specifically rangefinding, in fire smoke environments. A series of tests were performed in fire smoke filled environments to evaluate the performance of different commercial rangefinders and cameras as well as a long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) stereo vision system developed in this research. The smoke was varied from dense, low temperature smoke to light, high temperature smoke for evaluation in a range of conditions. Through small-scale experiments on eleven different sensors, radar and LWIR cameras outperformed other perception sensors within both smoke environments. A LWIR stereo vision system was developed for rangefinding and compared to radar, LIDAR, and visual stereo vision in large-scale testing, demonstrating the ability of LWIR stereo vision to rangefind in dense smoke when LIDAR and visual stereo vision fail. LWIR stereo vision was further developed for improved rangefinding in fire environments. Intensity misalignment between cameras and stereo image filtering were addressed quantitatively. Tests were performed with approximately isothermal scenes and thermally diverse scenes to select subsystem methods. In addition, the effects of image filtering on feature distortion were assessed. Rangefinding improvements were quantified with comparisons to ground truth data. Improved perception in varying levels of clear and smoke conditions was developed through sensor fusion of LWIR stereo vision and a spinning LIDAR. The data were fused in a multi-resolution 3D voxel domain using evidential theory to model occupied and free space states. A heuristic method was presented to separate significantly attenuated LIDAR returns from low-attenuation returns. Sensor models were developed for both return types and LWIR stereo vision. The fusion system was tested in a range of conditions to demonstrate its ability for improved performance over individual sensor use in fire environments. / Ph. D.

Over the past decade, the market for wireless service has grown at an unprecedented rate. The industry has grown from cellular phones and pagers to broadband and ultra-broadband (also called ultra-wideband) wireless services that can provide voice, data, and full-motion video in real time. This growing hunger for faster data rates and larger bandwidths has prompted a need for a deeper understanding of the wireless channels upon which these devices communicate. In order for the visions of real time full-motion video, multimedia, and high speed data delivery inherent in the 3rd and 4th generations of wireless communication standards to be fully realized, system design engineers must have a thorough understanding of the wireless channels upon which these devices operate. Additionally, for these networks to deliver their promised data rates, they must operate at very high microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies, where large segments of spectrum are readily obtained. Unfortunately, little is known about the propagation characteristics at these frequencies and bandwidths. As a consequence, there has been a significant demand for wireless test equipment that is capable of characterizing these new wireless channels. The objective of this research was to design and develop a wireless test instrument that can not only characterize these new wireless channels, but has the portability to be quickly and easily re-located to various measurement sites, as well as the flexibility to characterize a wide variety of frequencies and bandwidths in addition to the ultrawideband channels investigated in this work. This measurement system is also designed to be capable of characterizing both the magnitude and phase response of these wireless channels, which not only provides a more complete channel characteristic, but the potential capability to measure the Doppler spectrum introduced by a dynamic channel. / Master of Science

No / Purpose To document the magnitude of any learning effect for short-wavelength automated perimetry (SWAP) in patients with either ocular hypertension (OHT) or open-angle glaucoma (OAG) who are experienced in standard automated perimetry (SAP). Participants Thirty-five patients (22 with OHT and 13 with OAG) who had previously undergone at least 3 threshold SAP visual field examinations with the Humphrey Field Analyzer (HFA; Carl Zeiss Meditech Inc., Dublin, CA), and 9 patients with OHT who had not previously undertaken any form of perimetry. Methods Each patient attended for SWAP on 5 occasions, each separated by 1 week. At each visit, both eyes were examined using Program 24-2 of the HFA; the right eye was always examined before the left eye. Main Outcome Measures (1) Change over the 5 examinations, in each eye, of the visual field indices Mean Deviation (MD), Short-term Fluctuation (SF), Pattern Standard Deviation (PSD), and Corrected Pattern Standard Deviation. (2) Change in each eye between Visits 1 and 5 in proportionate Mean Sensitivity (pMS) for the central annulus of stimulus locations compared with that for the peripheral annulus thereby determining the influence of stimulus eccentricity on any alteration in sensitivity. (3) Change between Visits 1 and 5 in the number and magnitude of the Pattern Deviation (PD) probability levels associated with any alteration in sensitivity. Results The MD, SF, and PSD each improved over the 5 examinations (each at P<0.001). The improvement in pMS between Visits 1 and 5 was greater for the peripheral annulus than for the central annulus by approximately twofold for the patients with OAG. Considerable variation was present between patients, within and between groups, in the number of locations exhibiting an improving sensitivity between Visits 1 and 5 by 1 or more PD probability levels. Conclusions Care should be taken to ensure that, during the initial examinations, apparent field loss with SWAP in patients exhibiting a normal field by SAP is not the result of inexperience in SWAP. Apparently deeper or wider field loss in the initial examinations with SWAP compared with that exhibited by SAP in OAG also may arise from inexperience in SWAP.

Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / Silicon Blocked Impurity Band (BIB) detectors are highly efficient, radiation-hardened photodetectors that operate in the range of 5-40 æm. To further extend BIB coverage to 40-350 æm, Ge and GaAs BIB detectors are under development; however, these new detectors face fabrication issues that have delayed their introduction. This thesis will describe the use of a numerical model to examine alternate operating modes for GaAs BIB detectors in order to bypass current fabrication issues. The numerical simulations provide an understanding of the fundamental physics that governs detector transport. The proposed alternatives to standard operation are created by reversing the detector's bias and varying the blocking layer thickness. Modeling indicates that reversing the bias on these detectors provides a larger signal current than standard configurations, while preserving the principal benefits gained from a multilayered device. At the same time, the alternate bias configuration allows for the use of thicker blocking layers, while preserving overall detector responsivity and reducing shot noise. This proposed new model of operation should allow for the relaxation of fabrication constraints without sacrificing the inherent benefits associated with BIB detectors. These devices are of potential interest for missile defense and terahertz surveillance applications. / Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy

O objetivo da tese é discutir e analisar filmes realizados entre 1967 e 1971 que, ainda no estrito campo do cinema, estabeleciam franco diálogo com as experiências mais recentes das vanguardas nas artes visuais. Os dois eixos da investigação se referem a produções de duas vertentes cinematográficas contemporâneas que se consolidaram em Nova York e no Rio de Janeiro sob os rótulos de \"Cinema estrutural\" e de \"Cinema marginal\", respectivamente. Ambas tendências, qualificadas como \"cinema experimental\", surgiam no rastro de vanguardas artísticas com fortes desdobramentos nas artes visuais, no que ficou conhecido como minimalismo nos Estados Unidos e o um \"pós-tropicalismo\" ou marginália no Brasil. Nos filmes que podem ser tomados como mais representativos desta relação - Wavelength (1967), de Michael Snow; Serene Velocity (1970), de Ernie Gehr; Mangue Bangue (1971), de Neville d\'Almeida e Lágrima-Pantera, a Míssil (1971), de Júlio Bressane - busca-se analisar as principais operações formais a partir de questões e posicionamentos provindos de tendências das artes visuais ao lado de discussões teóricas cinematográficas, principalmente aquelas relativas à vanguarda no cinema. No segundo eixo, aproxima-se as contemporâneas experiências de Hélio Oiticica no cinema e em demais meios audiovisuais. Acompanhada desta análise formal buscamos situar estas obras no percurso de seus autores e no contexto artístico e cultural no qual se inseriam. Propõe-se assim, ao final, observar os paralelos e contrastes entre essas experiências e as razões de suas descontinuidades. / The main purpose of the thesis is to discuss and analyse films from the late 60\'s and early 70\'s that, althought in the strict field of cinema, established a frank dialogue with the most recent experiences of the avant-garde. The two axes of the investigation refer to productions of two contemporary cinematographic strands that took place in New York and Rio de Janeiro known respectively as \"Structural film\" and \"Cinema marginal\". Both tendencies, usually considered in the same field of an \"experimental cinema\", emerged after and in direct association with the artistic avant-garde tendencies with strong ramifications in visual arts, like what became known as minimalism in the US and the \"post-tropicalism\" or marginália in Brazil. In the films that can be taken as the most representatives of this link - Wavelength (1967), by Michael Snow; Serene Velocity (1970), by Ernie Gehr; Mangue Bangue (1971), by Neville d\'Almeida and Lágrima-Pantera, a Míssil (1971), by Júlio Bressane - we seek to analyse its main formal operations based on questions and standings derived from contemporary visual arts tendencies next to theoretical discussions especifically cinematografic, especially those related to avant-garde cinema. On the second axis, the closeness with the contemporary experiences of Hélio Oiticica in film and in other audiovisual media is one of the focus. Accompanied by this formal analysis we also seek to situate these works in the path of their authors and in its artistic, cultural and political context in which they were placed. It is thus proposed, at the end, to observe the parallels e contrasts between these experiences and the reasons of their discontinuities.

Recently there is an emergence of many Internet applications such as multimedia, video conferencing, distributed interactive simulations (DIS), and high-performance scientific computations like Grid computing. These applications require huge amount of bandwidth and a viable communication paradigm to coordinate with multiple sources and destinations. Optical networks are the potential candidates for providing high bandwidth requirement. Existing communication paradigms include broadcast, and multicast. Hence supporting these paradigms over optical networks is necessary. Multicasting over optical networks has been well investigated in the literature. QoS policies implemented in IP does not apply for Wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) or optical burst switched (OBS) networks, as the optical counterpart for store-and-forward model does not exist. Hence there is a need to provision QoS over optical networks. These QoS requirements can include contention, optical signal quality, reliability and delay. To support these diverse requirements, optical networks must be able to manage the available resources effectively. Destinations participating in the multicast session are fixed (or rather static). Due to the random contention in the network, if at least one or more destination(s) is not reachable, requested multicast session cannot be established. This results in loss of multicast request with high probability of blocking. Incorporating wavelength converters (WCs) at the core nodes can decrease the contention loss, however WCs require optical-electrical-optical (O/E/O) conversion. This increases the delay incurred by optical signal. On the other hand all-optical WCs are expensive and increase the cost of the network if deployed. Goal of this thesis is, to provide hop-to-hop QoS on an existing all-optical network (AON) with no WC and optical regeneration capability. In order to minimize the request vi Abstract vii lost due to contention in AON, we propose a variation of multicasting called Quorumcasting or Manycasting. In Quorumcasting destinations can join (or leave) to (or from) the group depending on whether they are reachable or not. In other words destinations have to be determined rather than knowing them prior, as in the case of multicasting. Quorum pool is minimum number of destinations that are required to be participated in the session for successful accomplishment of the job (k be the size of quorum pool). Providing QoS for manycasting over OBS has not been addressed in the literature. Given the multicast group (with cardinality m > k) and the number of destinations required to be participated, the contribution of this work is based on providing necessary QoS. In this thesis we study the behavior of manycasting over OBS networks. In OBS networks, packets from the upper-layer (such as IP, ATM, STM) are assembled and a burst is created at the edge router. By using O/E/O conversion at the edge nodes, these optical bursts are scheduled to the core node. Control header packet or burst header packet (BHP) is sent to prior to the transmission of burst. The BHP configures the core nodes and the burst is scheduled on the channel after certain offset time. In the first part of the thesis, we explain the different distributed applications with primary focus on Grid over OBS (GoOBS). We study the loss scenario due contention and inadequate signal quality for an unicast case in OBS network. We further extend this to manycasting. We modify the BHP header fields to make the burst aware of not only contention on the next-hop link, but also bit-error rate (BER). By using recursive signal and noise power relations, we calculate the BER (or q-factor) of the link and schedule the burst only if the required BER threshold is met. Thus all the bursts that reach the next-hop node ensure that contention and BER constraint are met. This are called “Impairment-Aware (IA) Scheduling”. Burst loss in the network increases due to BER constraint. Hence we propose algorithms to decrease the burst loss and simultaneously providing the sufficient optical signal quality. We propose three algorithms called IA-shortest path tree (IA-SPT), IA-static over provisioning (IA-SOP), and IA-dynamic membership (IA-DM). In IA-SPT destination set is sorted in the non-decreasing order of the hop-distance from source. First k of them are selected and bursts are scheduled to Abstract viii these destinations along the shortest path. In IA-SOP we select additional k0(_ m − k) destinations where k0 is the over provisioning factor. Over provisioning ensures that burst at least reach k of them, decreasing the contention blocking. However as the burst has to span more destinations, the fan-out of the multicast capable switch will be more and the BER could be high. In IA-DM destinations are dynamically added or removed, depending on contention and BER. Destination is removed and new destination is added based on the two constraints. Our simulation results shows that IA-DM out performs the other two algorithms in terms of request blocking. We show that IP-based many casting has poor performance and hence there is a need for supporting many casting over OBS networks. We verify our simulation results with the proposed analytical method. In the next part, we focus on provisioning QoS in many casting. QoS parameters considered for analysis include, signal quality i.e., optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), reliability of the link and, propagation delay. In this work we consider application based QoS provisioning. In other words, given the threshold requirements of an application, our aim is to successfully schedule the burst to the quorum pool satisfying the threshold conditions. We use a de-centralized way of the scheduling the burst, using BHP. With the help of local-network state information, the burst is scheduled only if it satisfies multiple set of constraints. Corresponding reception of burst at the node ensures that all the QoS constraints are met and burst is forwarded to the next hop. QoS attributes are either multiplicative or additive. Noise factor of the optical signal and reliability factor are multiplicative constraints, where as propagation delay is additive. We define a path information vector, which provides the QoS information of the burst at every node. Using lattice theory we define an ordering, such that noise factor and propagation delay are minimum and reliability is maximum. Using path algebra we compute the overall QoS attributes. Due to multiple set of constraints, the request blocking could be high. We propose algorithms to minimize request blocking for Multiple Constrained Many cast Problem (MCMP). We propose two algorithms MCM-SPT and MCM-DM. We consider different set of service thresholds, such as real time and data service thresholds. Real time services impose restriction on signal quality and the propagation delay. On the other hand Abstract ix data services require high reliability and signal quality. Our simulation study shows that MCM-SPT performs better than MCM-DM for real-time services and the data services can be provisioned using MCM-DM.

Strongly localised plasmons in metallic nano-structures offer exciting characteristics for guiding and focusing light on the nano-scale, opening the way for the development of new types of sensors, circuitry and improved resolution of optical microscopy. The work presented in this thesis focuses on two major areas of plasmonics research - nano-focusing structures and nano-sized waveguides. Nano-focusing structures focus light to an area smaller than the wavelength and will find applications in sensing, efficiently coupling light to nano-scale devices, as well as improving the resolution of near field microscopy. In the past the majority of nano-focusing structures have been nano-scale cones or tips, which are capable of focusing light to a spot of nano-scale area whilst enhancing the light field. The alternatives are triangular nano-focusing structures which have received far less attention, and only one type of triangular nano-focusing structure is known – a sharp V-groove in a metal substrate. This structure focuses light to a strip of nano-scale width, which may lead to new applications in microscopy and sensing. The difficulty with implementing the V-groove is that the structure is not robust and is quite difficult to fabricate. This thesis aims to develop new triangular nano-focusing devices which will overcome these difficulties, whilst still producing an intense light source on the nano-scale. The two proposed structures presented in this thesis are a metallic wedge submerged in uniform dielectric and a tapered metal film lying on a dielectric substrate, the latter being the easier to fabricate and the more structurally sound and robust. The investigation is performed using the approximation of continuous electrodynamics, the geometrical optics approximation and the zero-plane method. The second aim of this thesis is to investigate plasmonic waveguides and couplers for the development of nano-optical circuitry, more compact photonic devices and sensors. The research will attempt to fill the gaps in the current knowledge of the V-groove waveguide, which consists of a sharp triangular groove in a metal substrate, and the gap plasmon waveguide, which consists of a rectangular slot in a thin metal film. The majority of this work will be performed using the author’s in house finite-difference time-domain algorithm and FEMLAB as well as the effective medium method and geometric optics approximation. The V-groove may be used as either a nano-focusing or waveguiding device. As a waveguide the V-groove is one of the most promising plasmonic waveguides in the optical regime. However, there exist quite a number of gaps in the current knowledge of V-groove waveguides which this thesis will attempt to fill. In particular, the effect of rounded groove tip on plasmon propagation has been assessed for the V-groove. The investigation of rounded groove tip is important, as due to modern fabrication processes it’s not possibly to produce an infinitely sharp groove, and the existing literature has not considered the impact of this problem. The thesis will also investigate the impacts of the inclusion of dielectric filling in the groove on plasmon propagation parameters. This research will be important for optimising the propagation characteristics of the mode for certain applications, but it may also lead to easier methods of fabricating the V-groove device and prevent oxidation of the metal film. The gap plasmon waveguide is easier to fabricate than the V-groove, and is a new type of sub-wavelength waveguide which displays many advantages over other types of plasmon waveguides, including ease of fabrication, almost 100% transmission around sharp bends, sub-wavelength localisation and long propagation distances of the guided mode, etc. This waveguide may prove invaluable in the development of compact photonic devices. In the past the modes supported by this structure were not thoroughly analysed and the possibility of using this structure to develop sub-wavelength couplers for sensing and nano-optical circuits was not considered in detail. This thesis aims to resolve these issues. In conclusion, the results of this thesis will lead to a better understanding of Vgroove and gap plasmon waveguide devices for the development of nano-optical circuits, compact photonic devices and sensors. This thesis also proposes two new nano-focusing structures which are easier to fabricate than the V-groove structure and will lead to applications in sensing, coupling light efficiently into nano-scale devices and improving the resolution of near-field microscopy.

O surgimento de novos serviços de telecomunicações tem provocado um enorme aumento no tráfego de dados nas redes de transmissão. Para atender a essa demanda crescente, novas tecnologias foram desenvolvidas e implementadas ao longo dos anos, sendo que um dos principais avanços está na área de transmissão óptica, devido à grande capacidade de transporte de informação da fibra óptica. A tecnologia que melhor explora a capacidade desse meio de transmissão atualmente é a multiplexação por divisão de comprimento de onda ou Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) que permite a transmissão de diversos sinais utilizando apenas uma fibra óptica. Redes ópticas WDM se tornaram muito complexas, com enorme capacidade de transmissão de informação (terabits por segundo), para atender à explosão de necessidade por largura de banda. Nesse contexto, é de extrema importância que os recursos dessas redes sejam utilizados de forma inteligente e otimizada. Um dos maiores desafios em uma rede óptica é a escolha de uma rota e a seleção de um comprimento de onda disponível na rede para atender uma solicitação de conexão utilizando o menor número de recursos possível. Esse problema é bastante complexo e ficou conhecido como problema de roteamento e alocação de comprimento de onda ou, simplesmente, problema RWA (Routing and Wavelentgh Assignment problem). Muitos estudos foram realizados com o objetivo de encontrar uma solução eficiente para esse problema, mas nem sempre é possível aliar bom desempenho com baixo tempo de execução, requisito fundamental em redes de telecomunicações. A técnica de algoritmo genético (AG) tem sido utilizada para encontrar soluções de problemas de otimização, como é o caso do problema RWA, e tem obtido resultados superiores quando comparada com soluções heurísticas tradicionais encontradas na literatura. Esta dissertação apresenta, resumidamente, os conceitos de redes ópticas e de algoritmos genéticos, e descreve uma formulação do problema RWA adequada à solução por algoritmo genético. / The advent of new telecommunication services resulted in a huge increase of data traffic in the transmission networks. New technologies were developed and implemented over the years to attend to this growing demand, and the optical transmission technology stands. It has advanced greatly, due to the optical fibers large capacity of information transmission. Actually, the best technology to exploits the capacity of the fiber is the wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), allowing the transmission of multiple signals over a single optical fiber. The WDM optical networks have become very complex, with huge capacity (terabits per second), to attend the ever growing need for bandwidth. In this context, it is extremely important to use the networks resources in an intelligent and optimized way. One of the biggest challenges in an optical network is choosing a route, and selecting a available wavelength on the network to attend a connection request using the least amount of resources. This problem is quite complex, and is known as the routing and wavelength assignment problem or simply RWA problem. Many studies were conducted in order to find an efficient solution to this problem, but it is not always possible to combine good performance with low execution time, a fundamental requirement in telecommunications networks. Genetic Algorithms have been used to solve hard optimization problems, as is the case of the RWA problem, and has produced remarkable results when compared to traditional heuristics found in the literature. This work presents an overview of the concepts of optical networks and genetic algorithms, and describes a formulation of RWA problem that is adequate for solution by genetic algorithm.

Optical WDM network is the suitable transport mechanism for ever increasing bandwidth intensive internet applications. The WDM technique transmits the data over several different wavelengths simultaneously through an opticalfiber and the switching is done at wavelength level. The connection between the source and destination is called the light path. Since the WDM network carries huge amount of tra c, any failure can cause massive data loss. Therefore protecting the network against failure is an important issue. Maintaining high level of service availability is an important aspect of service provider. To provide cost effective service, all-optical network is the suitable choice for the service provider. But in all optical network, the signals are forced to remain in optical domain from source to destination. In the firrst part of the thesis, we deal the physical layer impairments (PLIs) aware shared-path provisioning on a wavelength routed all-optical networks. As the signal travels longer distances, the quality of the signal gets degraded and the receiver may not be able to detect the optical signal properly. Our objective is to establish a light path for both the working path and protection path with acceptable signal quality at the receiver. We propose an impairment aware integer linear programming (ILP) and impairment aware heuristic algorithm that takes into account the PLIs. The ILP provides the optimal solution. It is solved using IBM ILOG CPLEX solver. It is intractable for large size net-work. Therefore we propose the heuristic algorithm for large size network. It is evaluated through discrete-event simulation. But the algorithm provides only the suboptimal solution. To know the performance of this algorithm, the simulation result is compared with the optimal solution. We compute total blocking probability, restoration delay, computation time, and connection setup delay with respect to network load for the heuristic algorithm. We compare the performance of shared-path protection with dedicated-path protection and evaluate the percentage of resource saving of shared-path protection over the dedicated-path protection. In the second and third part of the thesis, we address the issues related to flexible-grid optical networks. In wavelength routed optical network, the bandwidth of each wavelength is fixed and rigid. It supports coarse grained tra c grooming and leads to ancient spectrum utilization. To overcome this, flexible-grid optical networks are proposed. It supports flexible bandwidth, and ne grained tra c groom In the second part of the thesis, we address the routing and spectrum allocation (RSA) algorithm for variable-bit-rate data tra c for flexible-grid optical networks. The RSA problem is NP-complete. Therefore a two-step heuristic approach (routing and spectrum allocation) is proposed to solve the RSA problem. The first step is solved by using a classical shortest path algorithm. For the second step we propose two heuristic schemes for frequency-slot allocation: (i) largest number of free frequency-slot allocation scheme and (ii) largest number of free frequency-slot maintaining scheme. As the network load increases, the spectrum is highly fragmented. To mitigate the fragmentation of the spectrum, we propose a xed-path least-fragmentation heuristic algorithm which fragments the spectrum minimally. It also supports varying-bit-rate tra c and also supports dynamic arrival connection requests. Through extensive simulations the proposed algorithms have been evaluated. Our simulation results show that the algorithms perform better in terms of spectrum utilization, blocking probability, and fraction of fragmentation of the spectrum. The spectrum utilization can reach up to a maximum of 92% and that only 71% of the spectrum is fragmented under maximum network load condition. Finally in the third part of the thesis, we discuss PLIs-aware RSA for the transparent exible-grid optical network. In this network, not only the optical signal expected to travel longer distance, but also to support higher line rates, i.e., data rate is increased up to 1 Tb/s. In such a high data rate, the optical signals are more prone to impairments and noises. As the transmission distance increases, optical signals are subject to tra-verse over many bandwidth-variable wavelength cross connects (BV-WXC) and multiple fibber spans due to which the PLIs get accumulated and are added to the optical signal. These accumulated impairments degrades the signal quality to an unacceptable level at the receiver, the quality of transmission falls below the acceptable threshold value, and the receiver may not be able to detect the signal properly. Therefore our objective is to develop an impairment aware RSA algorithm which establishes the QoT satisfied empathy based on the available resources and the quality of the signal available at the receiver. We formulate the PLIs-RSA problem as an ILP that provides an optimal solution. The optimal solution is obtained by solving the ILP using IBM ILOG CPLEX optimization solver. Since ILP is not efficient for large-size networks, we propose a heuristic algorithm for such a large-size networks. The signal power is measured at the receiver and the connection is established only when the signal power lies above the threshold value. The heuristic algorithm is evaluated through discrete-event simulation. It gives the sub-optimal solution. The simulation result is compared with optimal solution. The result shows that heuristic algorithm performs closer to the ILP. We compute the total blocking probability versus the network load for different spectrum allocation schemes. Total blocking probability is the sum of frequency-slot blocking probability and QoT blocking probability. We compute spectrum efficiency for the proposed algorithm. We also compare our algorithm with the existing routing and spectrum allocation algorithm, and the result shows that our algorithm outperforms the existing algorithms in terms of blocking probability and spectrum utilization.

O surgimento de novos serviços de telecomunicações tem provocado um enorme aumento no tráfego de dados nas redes de transmissão. Para atender a essa demanda crescente, novas tecnologias foram desenvolvidas e implementadas ao longo dos anos, sendo que um dos principais avanços está na área de transmissão óptica, devido à grande capacidade de transporte de informação da fibra óptica. A tecnologia que melhor explora a capacidade desse meio de transmissão atualmente é a multiplexação por divisão de comprimento de onda ou Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) que permite a transmissão de diversos sinais utilizando apenas uma fibra óptica. Redes ópticas WDM se tornaram muito complexas, com enorme capacidade de transmissão de informação (terabits por segundo), para atender à explosão de necessidade por largura de banda. Nesse contexto, é de extrema importância que os recursos dessas redes sejam utilizados de forma inteligente e otimizada. Um dos maiores desafios em uma rede óptica é a escolha de uma rota e a seleção de um comprimento de onda disponível na rede para atender uma solicitação de conexão utilizando o menor número de recursos possível. Esse problema é bastante complexo e ficou conhecido como problema de roteamento e alocação de comprimento de onda ou, simplesmente, problema RWA (Routing and Wavelentgh Assignment problem). Muitos estudos foram realizados com o objetivo de encontrar uma solução eficiente para esse problema, mas nem sempre é possível aliar bom desempenho com baixo tempo de execução, requisito fundamental em redes de telecomunicações. A técnica de algoritmo genético (AG) tem sido utilizada para encontrar soluções de problemas de otimização, como é o caso do problema RWA, e tem obtido resultados superiores quando comparada com soluções heurísticas tradicionais encontradas na literatura. Esta dissertação apresenta, resumidamente, os conceitos de redes ópticas e de algoritmos genéticos, e descreve uma formulação do problema RWA adequada à solução por algoritmo genético. / The advent of new telecommunication services resulted in a huge increase of data traffic in the transmission networks. New technologies were developed and implemented over the years to attend to this growing demand, and the optical transmission technology stands. It has advanced greatly, due to the optical fibers large capacity of information transmission. Actually, the best technology to exploits the capacity of the fiber is the wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), allowing the transmission of multiple signals over a single optical fiber. The WDM optical networks have become very complex, with huge capacity (terabits per second), to attend the ever growing need for bandwidth. In this context, it is extremely important to use the networks resources in an intelligent and optimized way. One of the biggest challenges in an optical network is choosing a route, and selecting a available wavelength on the network to attend a connection request using the least amount of resources. This problem is quite complex, and is known as the routing and wavelength assignment problem or simply RWA problem. Many studies were conducted in order to find an efficient solution to this problem, but it is not always possible to combine good performance with low execution time, a fundamental requirement in telecommunications networks. Genetic Algorithms have been used to solve hard optimization problems, as is the case of the RWA problem, and has produced remarkable results when compared to traditional heuristics found in the literature. This work presents an overview of the concepts of optical networks and genetic algorithms, and describes a formulation of RWA problem that is adequate for solution by genetic algorithm.