Delay Analysis of All-Optical Packet-Switching Ring and Bus Communications Networks

We study the delay performance of all-optical packet communication networks configured as ring and bus topologies employing cross-connect switches (or wavelength routers). Under a cross-connect network implementation, a packet experiences no (or minimal) internal queueing delays. Thus, the network can be implemented by high speed all-optical components. We further assume a packet-switched network operation, such as that using a slotted ring or bus access methods. In this case, a packet's delay is known before it is fed into the network. This can be used to determine if a packet must be dropped (when its end-to-end delay requirement is not met) at the time it accesses the network. It also leads to better utilization of network capacity resources. We also derive the delay performance for networks under a store-and-forward network operation. We show these implementations to yield very close average end-to-end packet queueing delay performance. We note that a cross-connect network operation can yield a somewhat higher queueing delay variance levels. However, the mean queueing delay for all traffic flows are the same for a cross-connect network operation (under equal nodal traffic loading), while that in a store-and-forward network increases as the path length increases. For a ring network loaded by a uniform traffic matrix, the queueing delay incurred by 90% of the packets in a cross-connect network may be lower than that experienced in a store-and-forward network. We also study a store-and-forward network operation under a nodal round robin (fair queueing) scheduling policy. We show the variance performance of the packet queueing delay for such a network to be close to that exhibited by a cross-connect (all-optical) network.