Cost comparison of all-optical packet switches with shared wavelength converters

The design of optical packet switch with limited number of optical components is addressed. Switch architectures based on the shared per node scheme for wavelength converters employment are considered and a cost model is proposed to compare reference architecture concept with practical implementation, based on the cost ratio among main components. The effectiveness of the approach in capturing the condition of convenience of different architectural approaches for given performance target and component costs is shown. The approach can be extended to the evaluation and comparison of a wide range of solutions.