APOSN: Operation, modeling and performance evaluation

This paper addresses various issues in an all-photonic network called APOSN (All-Photonic Overlaid-Star Network). By revisiting the fundamental star topology, a scalable architecture is proposed to cover widely separated nodes and to take advantage of the currently available optical technologies. An equivalent connection pattern is presented to facilitate the modeling of switching and routing operations. The proposed overlaid-star topology can support different switching techniques and reduce the complexity as well as the cost of switching and routing. We demonstrate the feasibility of such switching operations by evaluating different link resources, traffic patterns, delay constraints and other typical factors. We show that this topology is a good choice to capture both Time-Division-Multiplexing (TDM) and Optical Burst Switching (OBS) operations. Therefore, the APOSN can provide a feasible and efficient solution for high-speed networks of near future by making use of the currently available optical technologies.