Performance enhancement of optical burst switched networks

Optical burst switching (OBS) is an optical switching paradigm which offers a good tradeoff between the traditional optical circuit switching (OCS) and optical packet switching (OPS) since it has the relatively easy implementation of the first and the efficient bandwidth utilization of the second. Hence, OBS is a promising technology for the next generation optical Internet. A buffer-less OBS network can be implemented using ordinary optical communication equipment without the need for either wavelength converters or optical memories. In an OBS network, burst-loss performance is a critical concern. In OBS, the data-burst transmission is delayed by an offset time (relative to its burst control packet (BCP), or header) and the burst follows its header without waiting for an acknowledgment for resource reservation. Thus, a burst may be lost at an intermediate node due to contention, which is generally resolved according to the local routing and bandwidth information. The routing table maintained in each OBS node is generally pre-computed and fixed to forward the data bursts. Such a static forwarding feature might have limited efficiency to resolve contentions. Moreover, a burst may be lost and the network may be congested when a network element (e.g., fiber link) fails. In this paper, an efficient integrated scheme based on dynamic routing and burst segmentation has been proposed to improve reliability of data transport and network load balancing in optical burst switched networks. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach reduces effectively blocking probability and hence contention. Further, it provides end-to-end throughput performance also. Hence, it establishes an appropriate tradeoff between loss rate and end-to-end throughput. (C) 2009 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.