Wavelength-Routed Optical Multicast Packet Switch With Improved Performance

Optical packet switch with multicast capability enables a broad range of applications in next generation optical networks. In this paper, we propose a cost-effective scheme to enhance the traffic performance of our earlier reported optical wavelength-routed multicast packet switch by modifying rather than adding multicast modules in the switch. A packet scheduling technique is introduced to substantially reduce the output contention for the switch. The effectiveness of our proposed scheme in conjunction with the scheduling technique is analyzed and validated by evaluation of packet loss performance of the modified multicast packet switch through simulations. The simulation results show that the multicast packet loss probability of the modified multicast switch can be significantly reduced without increasing the number of multicast modules by our proposed scheme. This means that to achieve an acceptable level of the multicast packet loss probability, the modified multicast switch requires fewer multicast modules in comparison with our earlier reported switch.