Optimal packet scheduling in WDM optical switches with output buffer and limited wavelength conversion

All-optical packet switching is a promising candidate for future high-speed switching. However, due to the absence of optical random access memory, the traditional Virtual Output Queue (VOQ) based input-queued switches are difficult to implement in the optical domain. In this paper we consider output-buffered optical packet switches. We focus on packet scheduling in an output-buffered optical packet switch with limited-range wavelength conversion, aiming at maximizing throughput and minimizing average queuing delay simultaneously. We show that this problem can be converted to a minimum cost maximum network flow problem. To cope with the high complexity of general network flow algorithms, we present an algorithm that can efficiently find an optimal schedule in O(min{NW,BW}) time, where N is the switch size, W is the number of wavelength channels per fiber and B is the length of the longest FDL at the output of the switch. The complexity of the new algorithm asymptotically matches the lower bound of the scheduling problem. We also conduct extensive simulations to test the performance of the proposed scheduling algorithm under different traffic models.