Modelling and Performance Evaluation of a Translucent OBS Network Architecture

Most research works in optical burst switching (OBS) networks do not take into account the impact of physical layer impairments (PLIs) either by considering fully transparent (i.e., using optical 3R regeneration) or opaque (i.e., electrical 3R regeneration) networks. However, both solutions are not feasible for different reasons. In this paper, we propose a novel translucent OBS network architecture which aims at bridging the gap between the transparent and opaque solutions. In order to evaluate its performance, two different joint regenerator placement and routing heuristics are provided. Simulation results show that our translucent network model achieves performance results as good as those obtained with an opaque solution but with considerably less regenerators.