Comparison of wavelength-interchanging and wavelength-selective cross-connects in multiwavelength all-optical networks

We quantify the benefits of wavelength interchanging in terms of the required capacity and the blocking probability. Most of the previous work on this subject assumed single-fiber links; we study networks with multiple fibers, extend Barry´s (see Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM ´95, vol.2, p.402, 1995) probability analysis to the multifiber case, and compare those results with fiber gain calculations in exemplary networks. We quantify the gain in the blocking probability when wavelength interchanging cross-connects are used compared to the case when wavelength-selective cross-connects are used, and show that this gain decreases rapidly with an increasing number of fibers on a link. The formulation captures the effects of the topology and the traffic on this gain. Calculations and simulations are performed which verify the analytical results