Cataloged from PDF version of article.This paper proposes new analytical models to study optical packet switching architectures
with multi-fiber interfaces and shared wavelength converters. The multi-fiber
extension of the recently proposed Shared-Per-Input-Wavelength (SPIW) scheme is
compared against the multi-fiber Shared-Per-Node (SPN) scheme in terms of cost and
performance for asynchronous traffic. In addition to using Markov chains and fixed-point
iterations for modeling the mono-fiber case, a novel state aggregation technique is
proposed to evaluate the packet loss in asynchronous multi-fiber scenario. The accuracy
of the performance models is validated by comparison with simulations in a wide variety
of scenarios with both balanced and imbalanced input traffic. The proposed analytical
models are shown to remarkably capture the actual system behavior in all scenarios we
tested. The adoption of multi-fiber interfaces is shown to achieve remarkable savings in
the number of wavelength converters employed and their range. In addition, the SPIW
solution allows to save, in particular conditions, a significant number of optical gates
compared to the SPN solution. Indeed, SPIW allows, if properly dimensioned, potential
complexity and cost reduction compared to SPN, while providing similar performance.
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