Selective void creation/filling for variable size packets and multiple wavelengths

Abstract

With ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, both optical packet switching and optical burst switching are proposed as alternatives to increase the capacity of optical networks in the future. In these packet-based switching techniques, Fiber Delay Lines (for delay assignments) and wavelength conversion (for channel assignments) are used to avoid contention between contending packets. The involved scheduling algorithms decide on which Fiber Delay Line and wavelength each packet is scheduled in order to maximize performance. For the setting without wavelength conversion we proposed a scheduling algorithm for assigning delays called void-creating algorithm that outperforms existing void filling algorithms for a variety of packet size distributions. This is achieved by selectively delaying packets longer than strictly necessary based on a numerical procedure that assigns a theoretical value to each void based on how likely the void will eventually be filled and thus prove useful. This contribution extends the concept of void-creation to the important case with multiple wavelengths, where also the channel has to be assigned. Results obtained by Monte Carlo simulation show that with our void-creating algorithm the obtainable improvement in various performance measures highly depends on the number of wavelengths present.