Design of a Multiwavelength Network with Dynamic Channel Sharing

In this paper, we design and analyze a multiwavelength network with dynamic channel sharing. Traffic in the network is categorized into a real-time and a nonreal-time classes. The network blocking performance with and without channel sharing is analyzed and compared. Results show that the proposed dynamic channel sharing protocol can substantially improve the network performance without increasing the implementation complexity. The proposed network has the following features: 1) fully dynamic channel sharing; 2) many-to-one connections; 3) small and bounded packet delay for real-time traffic; and 4) high network throughput. We also study the tradeoffs in determining a minimum number of control channels and in choosing a traffic scheduling or a non-scheduling scheme for a practical network.