Performance evaluation of a bufferless optical packet switch with limited-range wavelength converters

In this letter, we introduce an analytical model which enables us to evaluate the performance of a bufferless optical packet switch equipped with limited-range wavelength converters (LRWCs). The model is applied in order to calculate the packet-loss probability as a function of the conversion range, when an optimum scheduling algorithm is adopted. The analytical results show that a switch equipped with LRWCs with a small range can match the performance of an architecture using full-range wavelength converters.