Mathematical analysis of the parallel packet switch with a sliding window scheme

Abstract

This work analyzes the performance of the parallel packet switch (PPS) with a sliding window (SW) method. The PPS involves numerous packet switches that operate independently and in parallel. The conventional PPS dispatch algorithm adopts a round robin (RR) method. The class of PPS is characterized by deployment of parallel low-speed switches whose all memory buffers run more slowly than the external line rate. In this work, a novel SW packet switching method for PPS, called SW-PPS, is proposed. The SW-PPS employs memory space more effectively than the existing PPS using RR algorithm. Under identical Bernoulli and bursty data traffic, the SW-PPS provided significantly improved performance when compared to PPS with RR method. Moreover, this investigation presents a novel mathematical analytical model to evaluate the performance of the PPS using RR and SW method. Under various operating conditions, our pro- posed model and analysis successfully exhibit these performance characteristics including throughput, cell delay, and cell drop rate.