Performance Evaluation of Node Architectures with Color and Direction Constraints in WDM Networks

We consider routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) in a WDM network consisting of optical cross-connect (OXC) nodes that have color and direction constraints. These restricted node architectures have a smaller cost than the more flexible (and best performing) ones usually assumed in the RWA problem. This introduces an interesting tradeoff between the network performance achieved, in terms of network blocking and number of manual interventions required, and the cost of the node architecture used. In the process of comparing the node architectures, we propose an adaptation of an RWA algorithm that accounts for the lack of node flexibility, aiming to achieve using the constrained node architectures, performance similar to that obtained with the fully flexible node architectures. Additionally, we consider different transponder assignment policies and determine their effect on performance.