Reducing Complexity and Enhancing Predictive Power of ML-based Lightpath QoT Estimation

Hussein Fawaz, Farhad Arpanaei, Davide Andreoletti, Ihab Sbeity, José A. Hernández, David Larrabeiti, Omran Ayoub
Lebanese University, SUPSI

IEEE ONDM 2024
Other version: [PDF] [[Code – forthcoming]]

TL;DR

We use SHAP-based feature selection to build simpler and more accurate ML models for lightpath quality-of-transmission (QoT) estimation in optical networks.

The complexity problem in QoT estimation

QoT estimation models often rely on large feature sets, increasing computational cost and limiting interpretability—both problematic in operational optical networks.

SHAP-assisted feature selection

SHAP values are used to quantify feature importance and systematically remove redundant inputs. This leads to:

  • Reduced model complexity
  • Faster inference
  • Improved interpretability

Results

Our method achieves:

  • Higher predictive accuracy
  • Smaller feature sets
  • Better generalization

Broader impact

This work demonstrates how explainable AI can be leveraged not only for interpretation, but also for practical system optimization.

Future work

We aim to apply this framework to other networking problems and integrate reliability-aware feature selection.