Patent ID: 8190031

Claim:
An optical network design apparatus for designing dispersion compensation of an optical network, comprising: a constraint setter configured to set constraints; and a calculation controller configured to derive an optimal solution from an objective function including the constraints, and determine, with respect to each of nodes, a dispersion compensation amount specified by the derived solution, as the dispersion compensation amount of a dispersion compensation module to be arranged in the corresponding node, wherein: the constraint setter sets a first constraint that one of multiple alternative values given beforehand is selected as the dispersion compensation amount of each of the nodes, the constraint setter sets, with respect to each of paths, a first margin value that assumes a nonnegative value, and then sets, with respect to all wavelengths of each of the paths, a second constraint that the first margin value is equal to or greater than a difference obtained by subtracting a lower bound of an allowable residual dispersion range from a residual dispersion at an end point of the path, the constraint setter sets, with respect to each of the paths, a second margin value that assumes a nonnegative value, and then sets, with respect to all of the wavelengths of each of the paths, a third constraint that the second margin value is equal to or greater than a difference obtained by subtracting the residual dispersion from an upper bound of the allowable residual dispersion range at the end point of the path, and the calculation controller generates the objective function which includes the first, second and third constraints and which includes a summation of the first and second margin values for all of the paths, and derives the solution that minimizes the objective function.