Virtual topology design of multichannel multihop lightwave networks

In this paper a multichannel multihop approach implemented by a hybrid (space, time, wavelength) multiplexing scheme is used to exploit the huge bandwidth availability of fibre optics. To interconnect the stations, a new class of networks, called Extended Shufflenet has been presented These topologies, which present many positive aspects (mainly simple routing schemes and low internode distance), have been analysed in terms of throughput and average delay. It is shown that these two performance criteria do not lead to a unique optimum topology which is instead obtained by the maximum power criterion. In particular, the optimization procedure, based on this criterion, allows a choke for a certain number of logical channels of the allocation scheme of the stations to these channels for the Extended ShuffleNet virtual topologies. The choke of this class of topologies is not restrictive, in the sense that the optimization procedure could be usefully employed for other topologies.