This paper presents a burst aggregation method for an Agile All-Photonic Network (AAPN) operating under an asynchronous burst switched mode. The model combines both the timer-based and threshold-based approaches into a single composite burst assembly mechanism. This is evaluated semi-analytically for fixed length packets and Poisson arrivals and used as a special case to verify a more general OPNET Modeler simulation. The dependence of the blocking probability on different burst aggregation parameters is observed as well. The same procedure is extended to 'encapsulate' (aggregate) variable packet length traffic into 'envelopes' (bursts) matched to the time slots in an AAPN operating in a synchronous time-slotted mode. Results are presented for an emulation of this process using real IP network traffic from the local LAN using two encapsulation methods that differ depending upon whether 'envelope' boundaries are allowed to cross constituent packets or otherwise. Bandwidth utilization was measured for different encapsulation parameters and it is confirmed that the model with the boundaries allowed to cross packets (i.e., the model with packet segmentation) is more bandwidth-efficient even if the processing delay is slightly larger. The successful operation of the emulation system suggests as well that a simple, low-cost software implementation would be suitable to perform the burst/slot aggregation process in AAPN.

Date Published: 13 October 2005
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 5970, Photonic Applications in Devices and Communication Systems, 597029 (13 October 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.629132

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5970:
Photonic Applications in Devices and Communication Systems
Peter Mascher; John C. Cartledge; Andrew Peter Knights; David V. Plant, Editor(s)