Design of IP optical nodes based on AWG with shared tunable wavelength converters

In order to meet the ever-growing demand of transmission capacity, optical packet switching technology is emerging as a major candidate, promising to allow fast dynamic allocation of WDM channels, combined with a high degree of statistical resource sharing. This paper describes the architecture of an optical switching node for IP networks based on an arrayed waveguide grating device to route packets. Given the high cost of optical components needed to route packets inside the AWG, two node architectures equipped with a pool of tunable wavelength converters fully shared among all input ports are proposed. Here an analytical model is developed that allows us to evaluate the performance of a bufferless optical switch architecture. Computer simulation is used as well to evaluate the packet loss probability in the node under various buffering arrangements by comparing different scheduling algorithms.