Dimensioning fiber delay lines in optical burst switching networks

Abstract

We investigate two different node structures with fiber delay lines (FDLs) in optical burst switching networks: FDL share per node and FDL share per link. We study the roles of maximum delay and the single FDL element granularity in FDL share per node. Our simulations show that FDLs with limited delay can effectively improve the network performance in terms of burst loss probability, but increasing the maximum delay beyond a certain range or making FDL granularity much finer cannot improve network performance effectively. The performance improvements in different reservation schemes are also compared.