METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DATA AND CONTROL PACKET SCHEDULING IN WDM PHOTONIC BURST-SWITCHED NETWORKS

摘要

A method and apparatus for scheduling data burst transmission in a wavelength-division-multiplexing photonic burst-switched network is disclosed. In one embodiment, a scheduler determines a set of weighting factors at each wavelength for each of the lightpath segments among all the network nodes. These weighting factors may be used to calculate a set of coarse-grained bandwidth allocation factors, one for each potential lightpath formed from the available lightpath segments between an ingress node and an egress node. The scheduler may schedule the transmission of the data burst on one of the lightpaths that has a coarse-­grained bandwidth allocation factor which indicates that it can support the requested bandwidth. The scheduler may periodically update the set of weighting factors at each wavelength for each of the lightpath segments.