Dimensioning of FDL Buffers for Optical Burst Switching Nodes

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a promising candidate for a more dynamic optical layer in the context of IP over WDM. Although buffering is not mandatory for the functionality of OBS, even simple FDL buffers can improve burst loss probability. In this paper, we first discuss principal buffer architectures and reservation schemes for fiber delay line (FDL) buffers. Then, we investigate key design parameters of FDL buffers like FDL delay, buffer architecture and total number of buffer ports. Finally, we introduce and evaluate strategies for distributing a given number of buffer ports over all FDL’s of a feed-forward buffer.