Even Slot-Transmission in Slotted OPS Networks

Among the many different bandwidth access schemes used in optical packet switched networks nowadays, the issue of transmitting optical packets (called slots in this paper) smoothly to an egress switch appears to be overlooked. Here, we explain the benefits of providing an even (smooth) slot transmission, and propose three methods to achieve an even transmission from an ingress switch of a multi-wavelength/fiber network. An index parameter is introduced in each method, and a formulation is provided to gauge how even a transmission is among different combinations of frame periods, wavelengths, and fibers. These formulations provide us with a new approach to compare different bandwidth access schemes. An example is provided for the comparison of the distributed bandwidth access, and the timer-based plus threshold-based bandwidth access schemes.