OPN05-1: Burst-Cluster Transmission Based on the Number of Hops for Improving Fairness in Optical Burst Switching Networks

In order both to solve the unfairness of the burst loss probability in terms of the number of hops and to decrease the overall burst loss probability, we propose the hop-based burst cluster transmission. In this method, bursts with different numbers of hops are assembled simultaneously, and a hop-based burst cluster is generated so that the bursts in the cluster are arranged in order from the smallest number of hops to the largest one. Then the hop-based burst cluster is transmitted along with multiple control packets according to the burst transmission scheduling. Here, a burst with a small number of hops in the cluster is transmitted before the transmission of a burst with a large number of hops in the same cluster. We evaluate the performance of the burst-cluster transmission for a unidirectional ring network by simulation. Numerical examples show that the proposed method not only improves the fairness of the burst loss probability but also decreases the overall burst loss probability significantly.