Most research works in optical burst switching (OBS) networks do not take into account the impact of physical layer impairments (PLIs) either by considering fully transparent (i.e., using optical 3R regeneration) or opaque (i.e., electrical
3R regeneration) networks. However, both solutions are not feasible for different reasons. In this paper, we propose a novel
translucent OBS (T-OBS) network architecture which aims at bridging the gap between the transparent and opaque solutions. In order to evaluate its performance, a formulation of the routing and regenerator placement and dimensioning problem (RRPD) is presented. Since such formulation results in a complex
problem, we also propose several alternative heuristic strategies. In particular, we evaluate the trade-off between optimality and
execution times provided by these methods. Finally, we conduct a series of simulation experiments that prove that the T-OBS
network model proposed effectively deals with burst losses caused by the impact of PLIs and ensures that the overall network
performance remains unaffected.Preprin
