Architecture for an optical-burst switch with WDM shared output buffer

Abstract

Feature Issue on Next-Generation WDM Network Design and Routing (WDMN). We present a new architecture of an optical burst-switching (OBS) switch that consists of several buffered stages using wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) fiber delay lines for buffering. The proposed switch architecture can cost effectively implement a large buffer depth. The use of WDM in sharing the fiber delay lines allows the proposed switch to emulate efficiently an output buffered switch using random-access memory under first-in first-out (FIFO) scheduling. To handle the case of non-FIFO scheduling, such as fair queueing, the buffered stages are interconnected by a switching fabric so that intermediate increment of burst delays is possible and non-FIFO scheduling algorithms can be implemented. Thus the proposed switch can deal with bursty traffic and provide different quality of service (QoS). Simulations have been performed to verify the performance of the proposed switch architecture for providing differentiated services (DiffServ). The proposed switch architecture is also compared with other switch architectures in the literature.