Design of a packet-switched WDM network with multi-wavelength selectivity

The use of low-speed tunable devices in packet-switched WDM star networks may lead to throughput and delay penalties. We propose (i) a new receiver architecture using multi-wavelength selectivity to eliminate the penalties, and (ii) a corresponding optimal scheduling algorithm for uniform all-to-all transmission. This architecture results in significant cost reduction in comparison with existing pipeline technique. When using a two-wavelength simultaneous selection, our numerical results show that (i) the throughput can increase by 40% in comparison with using a tunable filter alone; (ii) the throughput degradation is 2% in comparison with using two tunable filters in systems using a pipeline technique.