Studies On Key Technologies To Enable Edge Nodes In Optical Packet-Switched Networks

Two significant trends have identified in the development of optical networks based on wavelength division multiplexing technologies. The first is to increase the transparency of the networks so as to eliminate electronic bottlenecks caused by O/E/O conversion. The second is to reinforce the reconfigurability in optical networks in order to increase their flexibility. Thus, the switching functions are expected to migrate gradually from electronics domain to optics domain and form optical circuit switching to optical packet switching. More particularly, this migration will be gradual and take place in several phases, from wavelength routed networks which provides circuit switching services at the granularity of a wavelength, to optical burst switching which minimizes the need for optical buffering and header extracting at intermediate network nodes by dividing control and data for transmission, to optical packet switching which promises almost arbitrarily fine transmission and switching granularity and is bandwidth-efficient and flexible. Each of the three optical switching technologies (wavelength routing, OBS, and OPS) have important application domains; hence, rather than each technology replacing the previous one, it is highly likely that all three will coexist in the optical network of the future. Optical packet switching is the long-term objective of the evolution of optical network.This dissertation aims to investigate key technologies at edge nodes in asynchronous optical packet-switched networks, including optical packet assembly and related traffic shaping and optical packet schedule. Main work of this dissertation is outlined as follows:1. The performance of typical packet assembly mechanisms for traffic aggregating is examined in terms of optical packet size distribution, average optical packet size, average assembly delay under the self-similar inputting traffic. Also the impact of assembly parameters on the traffic aggregation performance of...