AN EVALUATION OF A NEW POWER EFFICIENT MULTICAST WAVELENGTH-ROUTING SWITCH

摘要

In recent years, there has been an enormous increase in the demand on large backbone networks triggered by the exponential growth of the Internet and in the popularity of bandwidth-intensive applications that are inherently point to multi-point (e.g., distributed virtual reality, audio/video conferencing, and telemedicine). Such factors are driving forces behind current research interests in providing multicast capability at the optical layer. Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) is the cost-effective answer to respond to increase in bandwidth requirements. In this paper we propose a multicast-capable cross-connect architecture that provides substantial savings in terms of dollar value and reduction in signal power loss with minimal effect on the blocking performance of the overall network.