Performance analysis of multi-fiber all-optical switches employing fixed-input/tunable-output wavelength converters

A Multi-fiber all-optical switch which employs wavelength converters with fixed input wavelength is presented. Being the converters tuned over a fixed input wavelength, each one is shared by channels on the same wavelength, so the resulting architecture is called shared-per-wavelength. Here the space switching matrices are simpler with respect to similar switching architectures proposed in the past (i.e. shared-per-node ones) leading to easier and less costly implementation. Moreover, fixed-input/tunable-output converters are expected to be less costly than tunable-input/tunable-output ones. A scheduling algorithm to forward optical packets in synchronous scenario and an analytical model to evaluate performance of the shared-per-wavelength architecture are presented. The analytical model is validated against simulation and the results show good accuracy in most cases of interest for optical switch design.