Operation of WDM networks with different wavelength conversion capabilities

We study the impact of wavelength conversion capability on wavelength routing WDM networks with fixed shortest-path routing. We propose a method for implementing wavelength routing in a WDM network with partial wavelength conversion capability. Simulation results show that such partial wavelength conversion networks provide a performance in between that of wavelength continuous networks and those with full conversion capability. In addition, it can be seen that only limited wavelength conversion capability is enough to provide a performance close to that of a network with full conversion. Analytical and simulation bounding results for the full and no conversion cases have also been provided.