Design of novel passive optical switching system using shared wavelength conversion with electrical buffer

We propose a novel optical switching system equipped with shared wavelength converters with electrical buffers. Simulation results show that the proposed system significantly reduces the blocking probability below 10−6 with low buffering delay. We present benefits of the proposed switching system compared with the conventional dedicated wavelength converter scheme in terms of blocking probability and average delay time. The proposed switching system is believed to be a technoeconomically feasible and implementable solution for optical packet/burst switching with current optical technologies.