This paper introduces an ant colony routing and wavelength assignment algorithm based on cross-layer design(CL-ACRWA),which can overcome the adverse effects of Doppler wavelength shift on data transmission in optical satellite networks. Firstly, a cross-layer optimization model is built, which considers the Doppler wavelength shift, the transmission delay as well as wavelength-continuity constraint. Then an ant colony algorithm is utilized to solve the cross-layer optimization model, resulting in finding an optimal light path satisfying the above constraints for every connection request. The performance of CL-ACRWA is measured by the communication success probability, the convergence property and the transmission delay. Simulation results show that CL-ACRWA performs well in communication success probability and has good global search ability as well as fast convergence speed. Meanwhile, the transmission delay can meet the basic requirement of real-time transmission of business. This paper introduces an ant colony routing and wavelength assignment algorithm based on cross-layer design (CL-ACRWA), which can overcome the adverse effects of Doppler wavelength shift on data transmission in optical satellite networks. Firstly, a cross-layer optimization model is built, which considers the Doppler wavelength shift, the transmission delay as well as a wavelength-continuity constraint. Then an ant colony algorithm is utilized to solve the cross-layer optimization model, resulting in finding an optimal light path satisfying the above constraints for every connection request. The performance of CL-ACRWA is measured by the communication success probability, the convergence property and the transmission delay. Simulation results show that CL-ACRWA performs well in communication success probability and has good global search ability as well as fast convergence speed. Meanwhile, the transmission delay can meet the basic requirement of real-time transmission of business.