The Use Of A Triangular Estimator To Improve Scheduling In Optical Burst Switched Networks

In an optical burst switched network, variable-sized data bursts are switched on the fly using bandwidth previously reserved by their control packets. A key problem in OBS networks is the assignment of wavelengths to incoming bursts, that is, the scheduling of bursts. This paper proposes a new class of burst scheduling algorithms based on a triangular estimator. The proposed tool reduces the complexity of the scheduling scheme (measured in channel checks) without compromising its performance (measured by the burst drop ratio). Simulation results demonstrate both the accuracy and the efficiency of the estimator in a variety of scenarios and under self-similar network traffic. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.