PO-MAC: A Software Defined Performance-Optimized Mac Strategy for Optical Data Center Networks

We propose a centralized medium access control (MAC) protocol for intra-rack data center networks using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology. Our proposed software-defined (SD) intra-rack architecture utilizes a passive optical coupler to interconnect rack servers over four WDM channels, each with a speed of 100 Gbps. An intra-rack performance-optimized MAC protocol is also proposed, aiming to efficiently allocate bandwidth among the rack servers to increase bandwidth utilization and decrease packet delay while avoiding collisions. Simulation results show that our proposal achieves 95.5% bandwidth utilization under heavy load, with an average packet delay of a few microseconds, meeting modern cloud services’ strict delay requirements. Compared to similar work, our SD optical intra-rack DCN proposal achieves 8% higher throughput and 95% less mean average packet delay for heavy loads. Note that upper layer routers are used for inter-rack communication, which is beyond the scope of our research