QA as an ILP-solver for Long-haul Networks

Optical long-haul networks are the backbone for public communication systems like 5G mobile communication and different variants of fixed-access networks. The transport of internet protocol (IP) traffic require a conversion from electrical to optical signals and vice versa realized by the power- hungry transceivers of the optical networks. Therefore, the economical efficient operation of networks like these require fast control algorithms for dynamic resource allocation and traffic engineering. Our work proposes a new Integer-linear program (ILP) optimization solution approach for the aforementioned network problem that can be solved on a quantum annealer (QA), a form of quantum computing architecture. We assume that network optimization is a well suited application of quantum computing as complex discrete optimization problems has to be solved within short time scales. Also the fact that today’s networks are controlled in a centralized way by software defined networking (SDN) allows a simple embedding of quantum computer.