All-Optical Packet-Switched Networks: A Study of Contention- Resolution Schemes in an Irregular Mesh Network with Variable-Sized Packets

This paper presents a comparative study of contention-resolution schemes based on wavelength, time, and space domains in an unslotted optical packet-switched network with a large irregular mesh topology consisted of 15 nodes. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we investigated the effect of selective deflection and limited wavelength conversion. Features and performances of different combinational schemes are listed and compared. While simulation results show the effectiveness of wavelength conversion for resolving contentions over optical buffering and space deflection, physical explanations of the different effectiveness in resolving contentions of these schemes are also discussed.