Toward alternative high-speed network concepts: the SWIFT architecture

An approach to communication architectures for high-speed networks which provides efficient, adaptive communication for any traffic distribution is presented. It is based on a concept of dynamic sharing of communication resources which is obtained from the following three-tier SWIFT architecture. At the physical layer the high-speed communication system is based on the use of several lower speed channels or frequencies. At the data link layer, driven by hardware simplicity considerations, the SWIFT architecture uses a fixed time-slotted allocation of subchannels, in which each node is required to transmit or receive over only a single, predetermined, subchannel at a time. To provide adaptive channel access control, while preserving the data link hardware simplicity, a network layer is added. This layer introduces multihop adaptive channel (frequency) routing on the inherently broadcast communication medium. The routing concept provides dynamic sharing of communication channels and buffers, leading to a fully distributed adaptive bandwidth control. An analytic model for analyzing the performance of the multilayered architecture is developed. It shows that for homogeneous or heterogeneous traffic requirements the approach provides throughput/delay performance superior to that found in existing communication systems