Scheduling Algorithms for Star-Coupled WDM Networks with Tunable Transmitter and Tunable Receiver Architecture

This paper presents the design and analysis of two scheduling algorithms for a reservation-based medium access control (MAC) protocol for wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) multi-channel optical networks. The network architecture is based on a passive star topology with one tunable transmitter and receiver (TT-TR) per node. The main objective of scheduling algorithm design is to reduce the computation time while maximizing the utilization of the network resources. In this paper, we propose two scheduling schemes called SEQSAM (SEQuential Scheduling AlgorithM) and BALSAM (BALanced Scheduling AlgorithM). Let M denote the number of nodes, C the number of channels, and K the maximum number of packets transmitted by one node to another. SEQSAM uses the M × M traffic demand matrix--obtained during the reservation phase of the MAC protocol--to compute a collision-free schedule for the nodes of the network. BALSAM uses the modified MULTI-FIT algorithm (MMFT) [1] to convert the M × M matrix into a corresponding M × C matrix, which is input to the IBS (Interval Based Scheduling) algorithm [2] that schedules the requests of the nodes. The overall time complexity of SEQSAM is O(M3) compared to BALSAM algorithm's time complexity of O(M2CK + M2 + MlogM). Note that the lower bound for any scheduling algorithm operating on a M × M matrix is O(M2). A simulation-based performance study that considers network utilization, computation time, tuning latency, average packet latency and throughput for 1.2 Gbps and 2.4 Gbps data streams is presented.