Routing permutations on optical baseline networks with node-disjoint paths

Permutation is a frequently-used communication pattern in parallel and distributed computing systems and telecommunication networks. Node-disjoint routing has important applications in guided wave optical interconnects where the optical "crosstalk" between messages passing the same switch should be avoided. In this paper, we consider routing arbitrary permutations on an optical baseline network (or reverse baseline network) with node-disjoint paths. We first prove the equivalence between the set of admissible permutations (or semi-permutations) of a baseline network and that of its reverse network based on a step-by-step permutation routing. We then show that an arbitrary permutation can be realized in a baseline network (or a reverse baseline network) with node-disjoint paths in four passes, which beats the existing results (M. Vaez and C.-T. Lea, 2000 and G. Maier and A. Pattavina, 2001) that a permutation can be realized in an n /spl times/ n banyan network with node-disjoint paths in O(n/sup 1/2/) passes. This represents the currently best-known result for the number of passes required for routing an arbitrary permutation with node-disjoint paths in unique-path multistage networks. Unlike other unique path MINs (such as omega networks or banyan networks), only baseline networks have been found to possess such four-pass routing property. We present routing algorithms in both self-routing style and central-controlled style. Different from the recent work which also gave a four-pass node-disjoint routing algorithm for permutations, the new algorithm is efficient in transmission time for messages of any length, while the algorithm can work efficiently only for long messages. Comparisons with previous results demonstrate that routing in a baseline network proposed in this paper could be a better choice for routing permutations due to its lowest hardware cost and near-optimal transmission time.