Performance of All-Optical Networks with Limited-Range Wavelength Conversion

Previous works have shown that wavelength conversion can considerably improve the performance in all--optical networks. However, it is an unrealistic assumption under the current technology and wavelength conversion with a limited range, not a full range, is more promising. In this paper, we propose a new analytic approach for such networks by virtue of the layered--graph where each wavelength is virtually assigned a separate link. Our analytic approach can allow a flexible routing method. For example, wavelength assignment and routing selection can be considered at the same time, which has never been treated in the past literature. 1 Introduction An all--optical network is expected to provide enough capacity to meet high bandwidth requirements for future very high speed multimedia networks. To realize such a network, it is expected for the switching nodes to operate without optical from/to electronic conversions since it causes processing bottleneck. However, it is difficult to prov..