Control Protocol for Optical Packet Switched Local Area Network

Optical technologies have progressed rapidly. The newly advocated network layered architecture allows optical transport networks to support different type of services directly. The introduction of optical packet switching brings more flexibility to the network which permits highly-reconfigurable and efficient data transmission. Nowadays, local access network technologies tend to take advantage of the potentially high data rate capabilities of fibre communication to deliver faster and more various services to end users. This thesis is centred on the work of SOAPS project, which aims to design an efficient and low cost protocol for optical local area network, avoiding the limitations and challenges that optical technologies usually have, so that optical packet switching can be implemented in the near future with existing optical components. The networking concept is of centralized control which reserves the network resource in advance to offer collision-free packet switching. With this protocol, there is no need for optical buffering or optical header processing in the optical switches. The controlling scheme chosen is polling mode, while interrupt mode is also attempted in the end of the thesis. Modelling and simulations are done to evaluate the network performance with the designed protocol. Results show how the network parameters and configurations can affect the network behaviour. A congestion control scheme is proposed to adapt the network to complex traffic situations. Two alternative controlling modes will be defined and explored in the end of the thesis.