Comparative analysis of power consumption in asynchronous wavelength modular optical switching fabrics

Next generation optical routers will be designed to support the flexibility required by Future Internet services and, at the same time, to overcome the power consumption bottleneck which appears to limit throughput scalability in today’s routers. A model to evaluate average power consumption in asynchronous shared-per-wavelength optical switching fabrics is presented in this article to compare these architectures with other synchronous and asynchronous solutions. The combination of wavelengthmodular switching fabrics with low spatial complexity and asynchronous operation is demonstrated to be the most power-efficient solution among those considered which employ shared wavelength converters, through presentation and discussion of a thorough set of numerical results. Index Terms Optical Packet Switching, Asynchronous Switching, Power Consumption, Wavelength Converter, Performance Evaluation.