A Data Burst Assembly Algorithm in Optical Burst Switching Networks

Presently, optical burst switching (OBS) technology is under study as a promising solution for the backbone of the optical Internet in the near future because OBS eliminates the optical buffer problem at the switching node with the help of no optical/electro/optical conversion and guarantees class of service without any buffering. To implement the OBS network, there are a lot of challenging issues to be solved. The edge router, burst offset time management, and burst assembly mechanism are critical issues. In addition, the core router needs data burst and control header packet scheduling, a protection and restoration mechanism, and a contention resolution scheme. In this paper, we focus on the burst assembly mechanism. We present a novel data burst generation algorithm that uses hysteresis characteristics in the queueing model for the ingress edge node in optical burst switching networks. Simulation with Poisson and self-similar traffic models shows that this algorithm adaptively changes the data burst size according to the offered load and offers high average data burst utilization with a lower timer operation. It also reduces the possibility of a continuous blocking problem in the bandwidth reservation request, limits the maximum queueing delay, and minimizes the required burst size by lifting up data burst utilization for bursty input IP traffic.