Modeling and analysis of a hybrid optical switching system with delay buffer and wavelengths classification

Abstract

Optical Circuit Switching (OCS) provides a good support for the services requiring high bandwidth and Quality of Service (QoS). When the character of network traffic changes from voice-oriented to data-oriented, OCS must cooperate with new switching mechanisms such as Optical Burst Switching (OBS) to improve performance. So a Hybrid Optical Switching (HOS) system is proposed. In HOS, different traffics are classified and both OBS and OCS can be processed. At the same time, delay buffer mechanisms, which are Fiber Delay Line (FDL) and electronic buffering, are introduced in HOS to solve the contention of OBS bursts. And a wavelengths classification mechanism, which assigns some wavelengths dedicated to OCS traffics, is provided to guarantee the QoS of OCS. To analyze the performance in theory, models based on Markovian theory and iterative method are provided. The results got by theory are accurate compared with simulations. The use of delay buffer can decrease the blocking probability of OBS and increase resource utilization. Wavelength classification mechanism benefits to improve OCS's performance.