Minimizing delay and packet loss in single-hop lightwave WDM networks using TDMA schedules

We consider packet-switched lightwave WDM networks with stations equipped with tunable transmitters and fixed receivers. Access to each of the available channels is controlled by a weighted TDMA scheme, whereby the channels are not necessarily shared equally among the various sources. In this paper we study the problem of designing TDMA frames to minimize the mean packer delay, as well as the mean packet loss probability given a finite buffer capacity. We develop optimization methods which, for non-uniform communication patterns common to parallel and distributed computations, represent a significant improvement over I-TDMA*. Furthermore, the margin of improvement increases with the size of the network. Our main contribution is to present relatively simple media access control schemes which, in the general case (i.e., non-uniform traffic), achieve good performance in terms of delay, throughput, and packet loss.