Traffic models for slotted optical packet switched networks

Optical packet switching (OPS) has emerged as a promising architecture for the future all-optical network scenario. In order to have a successful deployment of OPS networks, several networking issues must be resolved, e.g., how to resolve contentions and how to provide Quality-of-Service (QoS) differentiation. Such networking studies often rely on teletraffic analysis in order to quantify the performance of the OPS network. In this paper, we introduce new and review existing traffic models for slotted buffer-less OPS networks. In particular, we present a novel asymmetric traffic model, suitable for studying the effects of non-uniform traffic. Optical packet switches with and without wavelength conversion are studied. Numerical evaluations and a comparison study of the presented traffic models are reported. The main contributions of this paper are to advance the field of establishing a theoretical framework for slotted OPS networks and to act as a tutorial for teletraffic engineering in such networks.