A Scheduling-Aware Burst Assembly Algorithm for Bandwidth-Guaranteed and Delay-Bounded Services in IP-over-WDM Networks

We propose a scheduling-aware burst assembly algorithm to provide bandwidth-guaranteed and delay-bounded services for IP packets in IP-over-WDM networks. To transport IP packets efficiently over a network, they are assembled into bursts, and delivered within a given deadline. All IP packets in a burst should satisfy the deadline requirement, and, in turn, all assembled bursts are guaranteed to be served. To achieve this goal, the assembly and the scheduling processes of each burst need to be performed concurrently within the same active time-window (called joint window). The joint window size is set considering the deadlines of packets in a burst so that each of them (and, in turn, the burst itself) can satisfy its deadline. To guarantee service-availability for each assembled burst, the scheduling information (e.g., when and how long a slot is free for a burst) is fed back to the burst assembly process in each joint window. This scheduling information is used to determine when and how long an assembly process will be conducted. Those packets, which can not make the deadline, are not considered for the burst assembly process. Although, in our algorithm, the packets are transmitted in a burst (as described above), we investigate the packet-level performance for a IP-over-WDM network. The simulation experiments demonstrate that our algorithm can achieve low packet loss probabilities, and guarantee the delay-bound for delivered packets (loss probability and delay-bound are key factors for emerging IP services).