A cost-effective design for ATM switching fabrics

In this paper, we present a cost-effective design for ATM switching fabrics based on multistage structures, which involve no internal buffers at the constituent switching elements (SEs). The design consists of repeated copies of multiple stages of SEs, that are interconnected according to the indirect n-cube connection style between stages and that provide outlets for cells to terminate at their respective output queues when they reach their destined SEs, referred to as the I-Cubeout. This I-Cubeout makes use of far simpler SEs and requires fewer stages to achieve a given cell drop rate than the earlier design known as the shuffleout. It routes cells in a distributed manner and exhibits low hardware complexity, making it suitable for the ATM switch residing in wireless base stations.