An optical packet switch with hybrid buffer structure for contention resolution of asynchronous variable length packets

We propose an optical packet switch (OPS) using a hybrid buffer structure for contention resolution of asynchronous variable length packets. The hybrid buffer consists of a fiber delay line (FDL) buffer as the prime buffer and a shared electronic buffer as the supplementary buffer. For the performance evaluation, a modified void filling scheduling algorithm that can be applied to the OPS was proposed. Simulation results show that the use of the electronic buffer together with the FDL buffer significantly reduce the number of FDL required for contention resolution and considerably lower packet loss.