Coded Packet Transport for Optical Packet/Burst Switched Networks

Abstract: This paper presents the Coded Packet Transport (CPT) scheme, a novel transport mechanism for Optical Packet/Burst Switched (OPS/OBS) networks. The CPT scheme exploits the combined benefits of source coding by erasure codes and path diversity to provide efficient means for recovering from packet loss due to contentions and path failures, and to provide non-cryptographic secrecy. In the CPT scheme, erasure coding is employed at the OPS/OBS ingress node to form coded packets, which are transmitted on disjoint paths from the ingress node to an egress node in the network. The CPT scheme allows for a unified view of Quality of Service (QoS) in OPS/OBS networks by linking the interactions between survivability, performance and secrecy. We provide analytical models that illustrate how QoS aspects of CPT are affected by the number of disjoint paths, packet overhead and processing delay.