A Bandwidth Allocation Scheme in Optical TDM Network

Wavelength Routing (WR) and Optical Burst Switching (OBS) are two optical network techniques that have received enormous attention over the last decade. However, the two techniques are plagued with many problems. The main concern with WR is the inefficient bandwidth utilization. On the other hand, the problem with OBS is resource contention and burst dropping. In this paper, we propose a new scheme to share network resources using Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) instead of the statistical multiplexing employed in optical burst switching. To avoid contention and improve bandwidth utilization, we resort to a simple reservation scheme that guarantees timeslot deliveries. In addition, we propose the deployment of a new device that we call Sequencer, a simplified form of Optical Time Slot Interchangers (OTSIs), to assist in mapping incoming timeslots to some available outgoing ones. Our goal is to achieve a contention free network, and improve performance. Many classes of traffic can coexist in our network by adjusting the bandwidth allocation parameters.