On Noninterruptive Rearrangeable Networks

In this paper, we study a new class of nonblocking networks called noninterruptive rearrangeable (NIR) networks, which are rearrangeable under the additional condition that existing connections are not interrupted while their paths being possibly rerouted to accommodate a new request. We give a complete characterization of NIR Clos networks built of switching elements of various nonblocking properties. In particular, we propose a novel class of NIR Clos networks that leads to recursive constructions of various cost-efficient multistage NIR networks. Finally, we present examples of such constructions and compare them with the best previously known results