Translucent OBS network architectures with dedicated and shared wavelength converters

The deployment of translucent optical networks is considered the most promising short term solution to decrease costs and energy consumption in optical backbone networks. Indeed, due to the technological maturity of translucent wavelength switched optical network (WSON) architectures, they have already caught close attention from the research community. Moreover, recent advances and enhancements in optical devices are now (re-)fostering research interest in sub-wavelength technologies like, among others, optical burst switching (OBS) and optical packet switching (OPS). Hence, in this paper, we evaluate and compare two novel node architectures for a translucent OBS (T-OBS) network. To be precise, we study nodes with both dedicated and shared wavelength converter resources (i.e., DWC and SWC). To this end, we consider the impact of the main physical layer impairments (PLIs) and make use of a routing and regenerator placement and dimensioning (RRPD) algorithm to minimize the number of optical-electrical-optical (O/E/O) regenerators deployed in the network whilst, at the same time, guaranteeing a target quality of transmission (QoT) network performance. The results presented prove the feasibility and the significant savings, in terms of the number of wavelength converters (WCs), that can be achieved by considering a network with shared wavelength converter resources.