• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.34 no.4B
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• pp.394-402
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• 2009

In this paper, we present a new analytical model for estimating the blocking performance of multi-fiber WDM networt:s with sparse and limited wavelength conversion (SLWC). The proposed model is a reduced-load approximation model that can obtain accurate estimates of blocking probability of such networks. Our model employs three new recurrence formulae to obtain the free wavelength distribution on a multi-fiber link, the free wavelength distribution after limited-range wavelength conversion and the end-to-end blocking probability of a multi-hop path, respectively. From the numerical results on the NSFNET, we demonstrate that the blocking performance of two-fiber NSFNET with three wavelength-convertible nodes, each of which translates an input wavelength to its adjacent output wavelengths, closely approximates the blocking performance of full wavelength conversion.