Dynamically concatenated wavelength converters

An architecture is proposed for a wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) optical packet or circuit switch in which a bank of limited-range wavelength converters is shared among all input fibers, and in which any subset of converters can be dynamically concatenated (cascaded) to yield a wider conversion range for a packet that would otherwise be dropped because all unused wavelengths in its desired output fiber lie outside the range of a single converter. A probabilistic model of a switch is used to numerically determine the improvement in packet-drop probability achieved by dynamically concatenating converters.