A Heuristic Wavelength Assignment Optimization for Optical Packet Switching Networks

In optical packet switching networks, packet contention occurs at a switching node whenever two or more packets try to reach the same output port of the node at the same wavelength, consequently it decreases network performance. For optical packet switching networks without wavelength conversion, optical buffering, or deflection routing capabilities, the wavelength assignment is an approach to avoid the potential packet contention during packet transmission. This paper proposes an effective heuristic wavelength assignment optimization scheme. Through computer simulations, it is shown that the proposed scheme outperforms the other methods