Cost evaluation of optical packet switches equipped with limited-range and full-range converters for contention resolution

Two architectures are proposed for a wavelength-division multiplexed optical packet switch equipped with both limited-range wavelength converters (LRWCs) and shared full-range wavelength converters (FRWCs). The FRWCs are used to overcome the performance degradation in terms of packet loss probability due to the use of LRWCs only. Two different sharing strategies of the FRWCs are considered. In the first architecture, a pool of FRWCs is shared among the arriving packets. In the second one, the sharing is only partial and the packets directed to the same output share a same pool of FRWCs. A probabilistic model is proposed to dimension the number of shared FRWCs so that the same packet loss probability of a switch equipped with only shared FRWCs is guaranteed. After introducing a cost model of the converters depending on the conversion range, we show that the architectures may allow a conversion cost savings on the order of 90%.