All-optical cross-connect meshed-ring communications networks using a reduced number of wavelengths

We introduce a meshed ring communications network which employs cross-connect switches. The cross-connect switches can be implemented as wavelength routers resulting in WDM networks, or as ATM virtual path (VP) switches leading to ATM compatible network systems. We show in the paper that this network architecture results in a significant increase in throughput performance in comparison with SONET ring networks. For a certain class of meshed rings, under a uniform traffic matrix, we derive the optimal topology which achieves maximum throughput efficiency. For practical implementation reasons, we investigate the performance of networks which employ a reduced number of identifiers (e.g., using fewer wavelengths or fewer VPIs). We demonstrate that by increasing the bandwidth allocated to wavelength subnetworks, the required number of wavelengths is reduced. Furthermore, we show that by modifying the topological layout of the meshed ring network, we can reduce substantially the number of required wavelengths (or identifiers), while incurring just a modest reduction in throughput efficiency