Power consumption in photonic switches with shared wavelength converters

In this paper photonic switch architectures with shared wavelength converters are evaluated in terms of power consumption. Shared-per-input and shared-per-output wavelength schemes are considered. A methodology to evaluate power consumption, by taking into account the usage of switch components, is applied to perform average and instantaneous power consumption evaluations and comparisons. Trade offs between switch complexity, loss performance and power consumption are outlined.