Stochastic modeling and analysis of WDM lightwave networks

Single-hop and multi-hop wavelength division multiplex (WDM) access systems have been proposed to take advantage of the large bandwidth available in lightwave mediums. In such systems, there are one or several transmitters and receivers at each node in the network. The receivers and transmitters may be tunable or set at particular wavelengths. The lightwave medium makes available a large number of channels at different wavelengths. Recently, the stochastic analysis of single-hop and multi-hop systems has been studied. The authors present a unified `multi-facility blocking model´ approach to the stochastic modeling and analysis of WDM networks of both the single-hop and multi-hop type. The developed model is amenable to exact analysis by an efficient recursive algorithm. The modeling and analysis technique enables one to study the performance of arbitrary access configurations under general traffic conditions including the case of uniform traffic and the case where there are `hot spots.´