Performance analysis of star based WDM/TDM network topologies

Photonic telecommunication networks gain increasing importance in various fields extending from access to wide area networks. Due to limitations of fast all-optical switching technology, many promising concepts are based on circuit switching. In this paper, we propose a simple star topology using fixed wavelength assignment and a combination of wavelength and time division multiplexing (WDM, TDM). Owing to the fixed assignment, no tunable components or wavelength converters are needed in the central star element. For the receivers, we consider the two cases ''single tunable receiver'' and ''fixed receiver array''. A performance evaluation based on a probabilistic method is presented, which is validated by simulation. The results allow a system comparison and an evaluation of the trade-off between capacity increase either by additional wavelengths or additional time slots in the system.