Study of physical effects as a performance parameter in optical burst switched networks

In an optical burst switched (OBS) network, the optical signal may transverse a number of optical elements such as optical switches, fiber segments, optical amplifiers etc. All these introduce physical impairments degrading the quality of the data signal. In this paper we study the effect of the physical impairments on the performance of the OBS network. More specifically we focus on the amplifier related noise and its effect in the blocking probability of the network. The study is based on an analytical model that describes the OBS network, while the noise effect is introduced as additional constraint considered in the model.