Wavelength Routing for All - Optical Networks 1 Richard

We consider passive all-optical networks using wavelength division multiplexing and wavelength routing, i.e. the path of a signal is determined by the wavelength of the signal and the signal origin. We present upper and lower bounds on the required number of wavelengths to achieve a given blocking probability. Speciically we show that between ?p M (1?P b) and O ?p M wavelengths are required to support M active session requests in a network with M users and blocking probability P b. The lower bound holds for all networks with passive wavelength routing and xed wavelength changing devices. The upper bound is a passive construction without wavelength changers.