Optical burst transport network (OBTN) - a novel architecture for efficient transport of optical burst data over lambda grids

This paper presents novel network architecture, called optical burst transport network (OBTN), which can efficiently transport burst data over a virtual topology and reduce the port count of optical burst nodes. In OBTN nodes, bursts from attached optical feeder networks, e.g., metro networks, are multiplexed and transported to their egress OBTN node in one of two ways: preferably on direct end-to-end lightpaths set up between OBTN nodes or alternately on a relatively small number of hop-by-hop overflow burst wavelengths assigned to specific links which are shared among traffic flows. In contrast to hybrid network architectures which partition network resources completely and classify traffic at the edge for burst or circuit transport to isolate traffic classes, our OBTN approach integrates both resource types, i.e., circuit and burst wavelengths. It minimizes transit traffic in intermediate nodes and reduces node sizes while providing an overall very low burst-loss probability due to optimized contention resolution. First, we outline an emerging optical network scenario. Then, we introduce the OBTN network and node architectures, and show the impact of key design parameters. Finally, we compare OBTN with optical burst switching (OBS) and an approach using optical edge traffic aggregation switches, called burst over circuit switching (BoCS), regarding performance, required network resources, and node complexity.