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.