Blocking probabilities in circuit-switched wavelength division multiplexing networks under multicast service

We evaluate the call-blocking probabilities in optical networks which support multicast (or multipoint) service. Due to the difficulty of the problem, we restrict our attention to the case of completely connected networks, for which the blocking probabilities act as a lower bound for other topologies. Nodes may, or may not be equipped with wavelength converters. In both cases, routing can be done either directly, using one hop, or indirectly, and even in the latter case the number of hops can be either restricted to two hops, or unrestricted. We evaluate the blocking probability by first estimating the load offered to each link, and then use the iterative-reduced load approximation method to refine this estimate. Using this estimate, we then obtain the probabilities of blocking and success. Numerical examples are presented, and are compared to simulation.