Comparative study of limited-range wavelength conversion policies for asynchronous optical packet switching

We study an asynchronous optical packet (OP)-switching node equipped with a number of limited range (LR) wavelength converters shared per output link. We study both circular and noncircular LR-wavelength-conversion schemes. A wavelength conversion policy governs the selection of the outgoing wavelength for an OP if the incoming wavelength is in use. Through simulations, we show that the so-called far-conversion policy for which the OP is switched onto the farthest available wavelength in the tuning range, outperforms the other policies we studied. We point out the clustering effect in the use of wavelengths to explain this phenomenon. We also provide an approximate analytical method to find the packet-blocking probability in circular-type LR-wavelength-conversion systems. Based on the simulation results, the approximate method appears to lead to a lower bound for blocking probabilities for all the conversion policies we study.(c) 2007 Optical Society of America.