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Future telecommunication networks are expected to be increasingly heterogeneous and support a wide variety of traffic demands. Based on the nature of the demands, it may be convenient to set up lightpaths with different bit rates. Then, the network design cost could be reduced because low-bit-rate services will need less grooming (i.e., less multiplexing with other low-bit-rate services onto high-capacity wavelengths) while high-bit-rate services can be accommodated on a wavelength itself. Future optical networks may support mixed line rates (say over 10/40/100 Gbps). Since a lightpath may travel a long distance, for high bit rates, the effect of the physical impairments along a lightpath may become very significant (leading to high bit-error rate (BER)); and the signal's maximum transmission range, which depends on the bit rate, will become limited. In this study, we propose a novel, cost-effective approach to …