Approximate Analytical Performance Evaluation of Synchronous Bufferless Optical Packet-Switched Networks

We present a method for analytical performance evaluation of synchronous optical packet-switched backbone networks. The proposed method is applicable to networks of any topology built of nodes of any degree with any number of wavelengths, and capable of allowing for deflections. The method provides not only general results such as fiber utilization, but also detailed results on where and at what mean rates packets travel. We analyze the steady-state performance of a network loaded with independent flows. The admission control admits in a fair way at most as many packets as there are output slots available, while the routing algorithm uses classes, distances, deflections, and wavelength conversion. We compare the results of our method with simulation results for a large set of randomly generated test cases, and conclude that the proposed method yields reasonably accurate results.