Restricted intermediate buffering in OBS networks with combined nodes

This paper concerns optical burst switching (OBS) networks with combined nodes which function as both edge and core nodes. In such architecture, we propose intermediate electronic buffering of transit burst traffic. As our simulations show, this buffering, when applied in a restricted manner, decreases the overall burst blocking probability in the network and provides better fairness among short and long routes. We compare the performance of two versions of the proposed technique considering different network topologies. In the simulations, all the important mechanisms of OBS such as burst assembly, wavelength conversion, scheduling and routing, are implemented in detail.