QoS provisioning and tracking fluid policies in input queueing switches

The concept of tracking fluid policies by packetized policies is extended to input queueing switches. It is considered that the speedup of the switch is one. One of the interesting applications of the tracking policy in TDMA satellite switches is elaborated. For the special case of 2/spl times/2 switches, it is shown that a tracking nonanticipative policy always exists. It is found that, in general, nonanticipative policies do not exist for switches with more than two input and output ports. For the general case of N/spl times/N switches, a heuristic tracking policy is provided. The heuristic algorithm is based on two notions: port tracking and critical links. These notions can be employed in the derivation of other heuristic tracking policies as well. Simulation results show the usefulness of the heuristic algorithm and the two basic concepts it relies on.