Coding-Driven Scheduling for Frame-Based Multicast Switches

The method of network coding has been proven a promising solution to fanin conflict problems (traffic flows conflicting at input ports) in multicast switches in previous work. However, this approach is inefficient when applied to frame-based switches because of over-splitting with conventional algorithms. These algorithms do not support the benefits of network coding to be fully realized when ignoring the impact of fanout splitting. In this paper, we employ a self-defined weight for the Maximum Weight Matching (MWM) scheme for multicast switches. The corresponding scheduling algorithm avoids over-splitting to any traffic flow. The so-called Coding-Driven scheduling algorithm can remarkably decrease the minimum time slots required for scheduling, therefore improve the efficiency of network coding method in multicast switches as showed in the empirical results.