AUTHOR=Boev Aleksey S. , Usmanov Sergey R. , Semenov Alexander M. , Ushakova Maria M. , Salahov Gleb V. , Mastiukova Alena S. , Kiktenko Evgeniy O. , Fedorov Aleksey K. TITLE=Quantum-inspired optimization for wavelength assignment JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics VOLUME=10 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2022.1092065 DOI=10.3389/fphy.2022.1092065 ISSN=2296-424X ABSTRACT=

Problems related to wavelength assignment (WA) in optical communications networks involve allocating transmission wavelengths for known transmission paths between nodes that minimize a certain objective function, for example, the total number of wavelengths. Playing a central role in modern telecommunications, this problem belongs to NP-complete class for a general case so that obtaining optimal solutions for industry-relevant cases is exponentially hard. In this work, we propose and develop a quantum-inspired algorithm for solving the wavelength assignment problem. We propose an advanced embedding procedure to transform this problem into the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) form, having a improvement in the number of iterations with price-to-pay being a slight increase in the number of variables (“spins”). Then, we compare a quantum-inspired technique for solving the corresponding QUBO form against classical heuristic and industrial combinatorial solvers. The obtained numerical results indicate on an advantage of the quantum-inspired approach in a substantial number of test cases against the industrial combinatorial solver that works in the standard setting. Our results pave the way to the use of quantum-inspired algorithms for practical problems in telecommunications and open a perspective for further analysis of the use of quantum computing devices.