Delay Performance Analysis for an Agile All-Photonic Star Network

In this paper, we study the delay performance of a centrally-controlled agile all-photonic star WDM network that provides multiplexing in the time domain over each wavelength. We consider two timeslot allocation strategies, First-Fit (FF) and First-Fit+Random (FFR), as well as network scenarios with different propagation delays. Both theoretical analyses and simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the delay performance of the network. Through analytical and simulation results, we show that allocating residual free bandwidth can significantly improve queuing delay performance under light traffic load while maintaining good delay performance under heavy traffic load, especially for a network scenario with large propagation delays. The results obtained can be used to guide the design of scheduling algorithms especially for large-scale networks.