A novel hybrid wavelength converter node architecture for WDM wavelength-routed networks

摘要

Demand for network bandwidth has been increasing dramatically in recent years. Optical networks and the Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) technique are promising technologies for satisfying the explosive band-width demand. In addition, the wavelength conversion mechanism, which transforms an input wavelength to a desirable wavelength at conversion nodes, eliminates the wavelength continuity constraint, and increases the network efficiency significantly. In this paper, we propose a novel wavelength convertible node architecture and a wavelength conversion method, hybrid wavelength conversion. Along with the new hybrid wavelength conversion mechanism, we examine five different wavelength converter utilization schemes and present the best wavelength converter utilization strategy. A heuristic for sparse wavelength converter placement is presented as a result of our wavelength converter placement strategy. Results obtained from our research show that our wavelength conversion framework improves the network performance significantly without substantially increasing the network costs.