QoS-aware optical burst switching in OpenFlow based Software-Defined Optical Networks

OBS over WSON is one of the promising paradigms for future optical networks, which offers statistical multiplexing over high speed optical networks while eliminating electronic bottlenecks. In such legacy IP/WDM networks, control planes at IP and WDM layers are independently operated and managed, which may not optimize network performance. Recently, OpenFlow-based Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture is introduced, which enables unified control protocols for multi-layer networks to improve network agility and automation while reducing capital and operational expenditures. In this paper, we introduce a Software Defined Optical Network (SDON) architecture and develop a QoS-aware unified control protocol for optical burst switching in OpenFlow-based software-defined optical networks. A novel adaptive-burst assembling algorithm, a latency-aware burst routing and scheduling algorithm, and an effective OpenFlow-based signaling protocol are investigated. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated with a well-known GMPLS-based distributed protocol. The proposed QoS-aware unified control protocol significantly improves burst blocking, network throughput, and packet latency while offering better quality of service (QoS) to different classes of traffic with heterogeneous delay requirements compared to the GMPLS-based distributed protocol.