Segmentation-Based Path Switching Mechanism for Reduced Data Losses in OBS Networks

The Optical Burst Switching (OBS) technology emerged as an alternative switching paradigm for the optical transport layer. Its biggest disadvantage (high data losses) has been the focus of numerous research papers. This paper proposes a data loss reduction technique, which relies on the combination of global network coordination between network nodes and local contention resolution. Via full-scale network simulation it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme has improved performance in terms of data losses and resource utilization, compared to its constituent mechanisms alone. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the mechanism has proven to be less sensitive to load variations in the medium and high load ranges. Additionally, its complexity and deployment cost are low, due to the absence of immature optical components in the network.