Q-Learning Based Routing in Optical Networks

Abstract

The rapid increase in bandwidth demand has driven the development of flexible, efficient, and scalable optical networks. One of the technologies that allows for much more flexible resource utilization is Elastic Optical Network. However, there is a need to solve the Routing, Modulation and Spectrum Assignment (RMSA) problem. In this paper, we use reinforcement learning to improve the efficiency of the routing algorithm. More specifically, we implement an off-policy Q-learning and compare it with the state-of-the-art algorithms. The results confirm that Q-learning is highly effective when optimal results need to be found in a large search space.