Performance of a Delta ATM switch

In this study, we investigate the performance of an ATM switch with a Delta switching fabric loaded with Poisson as well as Binary Markov input sources using Monte Carlo simulation. The performance measures used are switch latency, buffer occupancy and cell loss probabilities. Various improvements to the switch design, such as increasing the buffer size and implementing a modified Delta switching fabric were studied. A system consisting of two switches linked by a single line was also simulated. In general, the performance of the ATM switch is reasonable given its simple and low-cost architecture which were the design goals. This is especially true for the case of Poisson sources. Using the modified Delta switching fabric and increasing buffer sizes could improve performance significantly at the expense of cost and complexity.