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Emerging 5G services are revolutionizing the way operators manage and optimize their optical metro networks, and the metro network design process must be rethought accordingly. In particular, minimizing network cost is crucial to curb operators’ investment. Taking advantage of relatively-short distances in metro networks, operators have the opportunity to optimize the placement of optical amplifiers (OAs) with the goal of minimizing amplifiers’ cost (and hence decrease network cost) without significantly affecting the quality of transmitted optical signals. Minimizing OA cost translates not only in minimizing the cost of equipment (i.e., boosters, pre-amplifiers and inline amplifiers), but also in minimizing deployment and maintenance costs of active amplifier sites. In this article, we propose a heuristic algorithm for OA placement and for the Routing and Spectrum Assignment (RSA) in metro networks, with the objective of …