Performance of AWG-based optical nodes with shared tunable wavelength converters

In order to support the continuous growth of transmission capacity demand, optical packet switching technology is emerging as a strong candidate, promising to allow fast dynamic allocation of WDM channels, combined with a high degree of statistical resource sharing. This paper investigates the performance of optical packet-switching architectures employing input and/or shared buffer, based on an arrayed waveguide gratings device and tunable wavelength converters to route packets. Due to the high cost of optical components we analyze the switch performance when a pool of wavelength converters is fully shared among all input channels