Loss Analysis of Multiple Service Classes Shared-Per-Wavelength Optical Packet Switches

Management of quality of service in optical packet switches equipped with fixed input, tunable output wavelength converters is described. This kind of switch is considered with the aim to keep switch cost low by employing simple shared optical components and low-complexity space switching matrices. In particular, differentiation among classes of service in terms of loss performance for bufferless switches is addressed. The functionalities described refer to the high-speed multiservice networking context foreseeable for the future Internet. A switch control algorithm to manage service classes in a slotted multiplexing context is described. An analytical model to evaluate the loss probability of each class is developed and validated against a simulation and is used to prove the effectiveness of the quality-of-service approach. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme achieves basic class isolation as needed in core network optical packet switches.