A novel transfer mode to reduce burst loss rate for optical burst switching networks

Abstract

A crucial issue in optical burst switching (OBS) networks is burst loss caused by resource contention. As a result, many methods are currently being proposed to reduce burst loss rate. These methods can be summed up into two categories: burst scheduling algorithms and contention resolutions. Both categories of methods can reduce burst loss rate to a certain degree. However, to make OBS to become a viable solution, the burst loss rate needs to be further reduced. Furthermore, almost all methods ignore the fact that an unfortunately scheduled, locally generated single-hop burst could block a number of future incoming transit bursts, though the burst just travels to its next downstream node. This phenomenon becomes more evident when links are heavily loaded in mesh OBS networks. To eliminate contention caused by single-hop traffic completely, this paper proposes a novel transfer mode called packet calking by differentiating between single-hop traffic from multihop traffic for OBS networks. An analysis model is developed to evaluate the performance of packet calking. Theoretical results are validated through extensive simulations in both ring and mesh networks. These results show that packet calking outperforms the transfer mode without packet calking in terms of burst loss rate and link utilization.