Reliability performances of optical ATM switches based on different routing and buffering schemes

Reliability performances of seven equal-capacity optical asynchronous transfer mode switches based on different routing and buffering schemes are compared. Calculations are based on available reliability data for commercial components as well as expected life lengths for new components and systems. In general, for switching systems, the average downtime is required to be held below 3 min/year. However, our results indicate that the average downtime for the proposed configurations is much longer than requested, over ten times longer for the best case and over 1500 times longer for the worst case. Therefore, the multiplane structures (i.e., multiplying of the entire systems) have to be provided for the switching systems investigated here in order to satisfy reliability requirements.