Channel pre-allocation for single-hop WDM networks with multiple receivers

WDM optical networks represent the direction to the future high capacity access network applications. In this paper, we investigate the influence of tuning latency on the performance of different architectures of single-hop WDM star networks. Two configurations are mainly considered: one slowly tunable transmitter and multiple fixed receivers (STT/MFRs) and single tunable transmitter and single fixed receiver (TT/FR). For both configurations one home channel is pre-allocated to each node. Assuming the traffic is non-uniformly distributed, an optimal channel allocation with a simple mixed integer linear programming model is proposed for STT/MFRs. To investigate the performance, evaluation through simulations is done in terms of network throughput, packet delay. The results show us TT/FR is tuning latency architecture, while STT/FR is not a tuning latency sensitive architecture. TT/FR configuration requires very quickly tunable transmitters, while STT/MFRs configuration can make use of the off-the-shelf low cost slowly tunable optical components to yield good performance.