Performance of WDM rings with partial and sparse wavelength conversion under general dynamic traffic

Dynamic wavelength assignment in a WDM all-optical network with partial and sparse wavelength conversion is discussed in this paper. The performance of unidirectional and bidirectional ring networks in terms of blocking probability, conversion gain and fairness is evaluated under various types of offered traffic patterns. Smooth and peaked patterns have been considered in addition to the classical Poisson traffic type. We show how the partial use of wavelength converters having a limited conversion capability affects the blocking performance of connections and, more importantly in terms of network fairness, its dependence on the source-destination distance.