Performance evaluation of multi-fiber optical packet switches

Multi-fiber WDM networks are becoming the major telecommunication platforms for transmitting exponentially increasing data traffic. While today’s networks are mainly providing circuit-switched connections, optical packet-switching technologies have been investigated for years, aiming at achieving more efficient utilizations of network resources. In this paper, we have evaluated, for the first time, the packet-loss performance of multi-fiber optical packet switches (MOPS). Our main contributions are threefold. Firstly, we have proposed simple and accurate analytical models for analyzing packet-loss performance of (i) the most fundamental MOPS configuration, (ii) MOPS equipped with fiber delay lines (FDLs) and (iii) shared wavelength converters (SWCs). Secondly, we have shown that the MOPS network cannot achieve the same performance as the one with full wavelength conversion (FWC), which is quite different from the well-known conclusion in circuit-switched networks. However, MOPS does significantly outperform the classic single-fiber switches. By introducing a small number of FDLs or SWCs, it outperforms the highly expensive FWC solution as well. Finally, we have taken the hardware constraints into consideration by evaluating the performance of MOPS configurations having multiple limited-sized switching boards, which leads to some insights helpful for developing cost-effective MOPS configurations in the future.