Design and Implementation of Burst Switching Nodes for WDM Optical Networks

Optical burst switching (OBS) has been paid increasing attention as an attractive alternative for building future photonic Internet. Besides pure theoretical research, experimental prototype and proof-of-concept demonstration are also significant parts toward practical burst switched WDM optical networks. This paper describes hardware architecture, software module and experimental results of optical burst switching nodes using a just-enough-time (JET) protocol and contention resolutions. The core node forwards bursts in the optical domain with deflection routing resolution. It is designed to be transparent to the format, the protocol and the bit rate of traffic. The edge node performs burst assembly/disassembly, as well as burst forwarding, which makes it flexible to be applied to various topologies. The related control protocols and algorithms are implemented taking into account characteristics of being used commercial off-the-shelf devices. By the experiments, the basic function of optical burst switching is demonstrated, the delay measurement result is analyzed, and the effort direction is given