Comparison of node architectures for elastic optical networks with waveband conversion

In Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) with flexible bandwidth allocation, the blocking probability is high because of spectral contention. Similar to the functionality of wavelength conversion in Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (WDM) networks, waveband conversion has been proposed to solve spectral contention in EONs. In this paper, we discuss the design of node architectures for an EON with waveband conversion. Four node architectures with shared Tuneable Waveband Converters (TWBCs) are proposed, and their blocking performances are evaluated by simulation. Simulation results show that the blocking probability of a node is significantly improved by waveband conversion. The sharing efficiency of waveband converters is also investigated. Simulation results show that at the same blocking rate, the node architecture with converters shared per node can save more than 20% waveband converters compared with that of the one with converters shared per link.