Minimizing the Impact of In-band Jamming Attacks in WDM Optical Networks

Abstract

This work presents an algorithm for the planning phase of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical networks considering the impact of physical layer attacks. Since the signals in transparent WDM networks are transmitted all-optical, these networks are vulnerable against high-power jamming attacks. Due to crosstalk induced interactions among different connections, malicious high-power signals are spread in the network. To this end, it is necessary to plan an optical network in a way that the spread of an attack is minimized. In this work an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation is proposed that addresses the problem of Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) with the objective to minimize the propagation of the introduced high-power malicious signals. The physical layer attack propagation is modeled as interactions among connections through in-band channel crosstalk. Additionally, Linear Programming (LP) relaxation techniques are used to handle larger network instances.