Reservation signalling mechanism for reducing blocking probability in optical burst switching networks with limited wavelength conversion capabilities

First, the optical burst switching (OBS) network with limited wavelength conversion capability (LWCC) is decomposed into multiple wavelength continuous segments according to the position of wavelength converters. Based on the decomposed network model, two reservation signalling mechanisms for OBS-LWCC networks, namely wavelength-amend-on-demand (WAoD) and contention-based limited signalling protocol (CLSP), are proposed to reduce the blocking probability in the OBS-LWCC networks. In WAoD, the congested node sends a feedback message to the closest upstream switch with wavelength conversion capability. The notified switch will change the burst wavelength to the one assigned by the congested node to avoid collision in advance. Extensive simulation results indicate that by applying the wavelength reconfiguration method to the core nodes without wavelength conversion capability, the proposed WAoD scheme can improve the blocking performance in the OBS-LWCC networks significantly. Furthermore, CLSP, which combines the burst time-slot reconfiguration with the wavelength reconfiguration of WAoD, always has the lowest burst loss probability when compared with both the conventional and the proposed reservation mechanisms.