A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2005

In this study, we show that in Optical Burst Switching, optimal dimensions exist for Fiber Delay Line (FDL) buffer when used in configuration with the Horizon scheduler. We investigate the performance of the Horizon scheduler with FDL buffer in terms of burst loss probability, mean delay, and buffer usage by using an NS-2 based simulator. From the numerical results, we show that the burst loss probabilities are at a minimum when the elemental or unit delay is about 0.4 to 0.6 times the mean burst duration for a mean offered load per channel of 0.9 and a mean burst duration of 30 s. Within this range, the mean delay varies between 10 s and 60 s for buffer depths of 1 to 7. The performance of the Horizon scheduler is also investigated for self-similar input traffic. It is shown that the performance of Horizon scheduling algorithm is more sensitive to the distribution of the Control Packet inter-arrival time while the distribution of the burst duration has less effect on the scheduler's performance. It is found that optimum dimensions for the FDL buffer also exist for self-similar traffic.