Jianchao Wang East Isle Technologies Inc., Setauket, NY 11733, USA Abstract—In this paper, we consider cost-effective designs of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) optical switching networks for current and future generation communication systems. Based on different target applications: we categorize WDM optical switching networks into two connection models: the wavelength-based model and the fiberlink-based model. Most of existing WDM optical switching networks belong to the first category. In this paper we present new designs for WDM optical switching networks under both models by using sparse crossbar switches instead of full crossbar switches in combination with wavelength converters | WDM Optical Switching Networks Using Sparse Crossbars Yuanyuan Yang Department of Electrical Computer Engineering State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook NY 11794 USA Jianchao Wang East Isle Technologies Inc. Setauket NY 11733 USA Abstract In this paper we consider cost-effective designs of wavelength division multiplexing WDM optical switching networks for current and future generation communication systems. Based on different target applications we categorize WDM optical switching networks into two connection models the wavelength-based model and the fiberlink-based model. Most of existing WDM optical switching networks belong to the first category. In this paper we present new designs for WDM optical switching networks under both models by using sparse crossbar switches instead of full crossbar switches in combination with wavelength converters. The newly designed sparse WDM optical switching networks have minimum hardware cost in terms of both the number of crosspoints and the number of wavelength converters. The single stage and multistage implementations of the sparse WDM optical switching networks are considered. An optimal routing algorithm for the proposed sparse WDM optical switching networks is also presented. Index Terms Wavelength division multiplexing WDM optical switching networks optical switches network architectures sparse crossbars concentrators wavelength conversion permutation multicast multistage networks. I. Introduction Currently there exists an enormous demand for bandwidth from many emerging networking and computing applications such as data-browsing in the world wide web video conferencing video on demand E-commerce and image distributing. optical networking is a promising solution to this problem because of the huge bandwidth of optics. As we know a single optical fiber can potentially provide a bandwidth of nearly 50 terabits per second which is about four orders of magnitude higher than electronic data rates of a few .
