Performance of a dynamically wavelength-routed optical burst switched network

This letter describes a novel network architecture combining optical burst switching with dynamic wavelength allocation to achieve a guaranteed quality of service. All processing and buffering functions are concentrated at the network edge and bursts are assigned to fast tuneable lasers and routed over a bufferless optical transport core using dynamic wavelength assignment. Burst aggregation is evaluated for a range of traffic statistics in terms of delay and packet loss rate, and an analytical model is given to quantify the benefits of dynamic wavelength reuse. The results define the operational gain achievable with dynamic wavelength assignment compared to quasi-static wavelength-routed optical networks.