Modeling and design of WDM optical buffers in asynchronous and variable-length optical packet switches

This paper aims to analyze the influence of wavelength conversion on the design of optical fiber delay line (FDL) buffers in a wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) packet switch. We focus on the network scenario that variable-length packets arrive at the optical switch asynchronously. Through a detailed analysis of the behaviors of packets in the WDM FDL buffer, an approximate analytical traffic model is established. And the theoretical model is proved to be reasonable by simulations. Based on the model, it is clear that, under the same traffic load per wavelength channel, the utilization of tunable wavelength converters (TWCs) to resolve the output contention significantly reduces the number of fiber delay lines (FDLs) in optical buffers, and to achieve a given packet loss probability under a certain number of FDLs, the required number of tunable wavelengths can be predicted. The model can also estimate the optimal value of the basic time unit of the FDLs, and examine the influence of WDM on the optimal value. Finally, the impact of wavelength conversion on the optical switch size is analyzed. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that modeling on this problem is presented.