A comparison of regular topologies for all-optical networks

Two regular meshed topologies are compared in terms of their possible use for implementing large all-optical wavelength routing communication networks or interconnection systems. It is assumed that the networks provide full connectivity among users and operate with either packet or circuit switching in a wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) environment, so that source-destination pairs are identified through a frequency and a physical path. The topologies considered are the K-dimensional bidirectional square lattice and the shuffle topology. The comparison is based on the maximum and average distance between nodes, and on the minimum number of identifiers (frequencies in the WDM comb) necessary to discriminate all source-destination pairs.<>