We consider the problem of scheduling bursts of data in an opticalnetwork with an ultra-fast tunable laser and a fixed receiver ateach node. In previous work we considered the static schedulingproblem of meeting demand in the minimal time. Here wesubstantially extend these results to the case of online, dynamicscheduling. Due to the high data rates employed on the opticallinks, the burst transmissions typically last for very short timescompared to the round trip propagation times betweensource-destination pairs. A good schedule ensures that (i) thereare no transmit/receive conflicts, (ii) throughput is maximized,and (iii) propagation delays are observed. We formulate thescheduling problem as a generalization of the well-known crossbarswitch scheduling problem. We show that the algorithms presentedpreviously can be implemented in dynamic form to give 100%throughput. Further, we show that one of the more intuitivesolutions does not lead to maximal throughput. We show theadvantages of adaptive batch sizes over fixed batch sizes for boththroughput and performance considerations.
Keywords:
Optical Interconnects
High speed packet processing engines