Timer-Based Transmission Control Providing Burstiness Mitigation and Enhanced Throughput for Transport Layer Protocols in Optical Packet Switching Networks

In Optical Packet Switching (OPS) networks, the absence of practical optical buffers results in packet collisions at relay nodes when multiple packets arrive simultaneously at the output port. This frequently leads to packet loss, even under non-congested conditions, preventing conventional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) from fully utilizing the bandwidth of bottleneck links. Furthermore, highly bursty data transmissions impose significant loads on relay nodes in this ultra-high-speed environment, which is undesirable. Despite these challenges, OPS technologies are expected to overcome the bottlenecks associated with electrical conversion and switching processes, enabling high-speed and low-latency communication. To fully realize this potential, this study proposes a method for controlling packet transmission timing to effectively utilize link bandwidth in OPS networks while reducing burstiness. The fundamental characteristics of this approach are evaluated.