A Hybrid Model of Limited Burst Retransmission and Deflection Routing in Optical Switching Network

Abstract Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is considered a promising optical switching technology for the future. However, a key issue of the OBS network is reducing dropped bursts due to contentions because there is no optical buffer at intermediate nodes. Several methods have been proposed to address burst contention, such as wavelength conversion, Fiber Delay Line (FDL) usage, deflection routing, or burst retransmission. Among these methods, deflection routing and burst retransmission are two approaches that do not modify the network infrastructure and can take advantage of idle resources on alternative connections. However, uncontrolled burst retransmissions and misrouting can lead to increased collisions, and potentially endless collision handling loops. This paper proposes a hybrid model of limited burst retransmission and deflection routing. Simulation results show that the proposed model has significantly improved resource utilization efficiency, burst-dropping probability, and end-to-end transmission delay.