Design of a multistage self‐routing switch with a distributed cell sequence control
Hitoshi Obara · Electronics and Communications in Japan (Part I Communications) · 1990
Abstract As a technique for constructing the switch fabric in the ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) communication system, the self‐routing switching network has been proposed where the buffered Banyan network is used as the distribution network as well as the routing network. The features of this kind of switch are that it is of a distributed structure, being suited to the modular construction, the large capacity system can easily be realized, and the performance is stable for diversified traffic. On the other hand, it has a problem in that the order of the transmitted information (cells) is not preserved. This paper proposes anew a switch construction with time stamps attached to the cells. The cell sequence is preserved by controlling the sequence of the time stamps, and the system can be controlled in a distributed way. The feature of the method is that the cell sequence is preserved while maintaining the self‐routing property of the traditional multistage buffered switch. Also, the principle and the optimal construction are described. Basic system parameters such as the required word length for the time stamp signal are determined. The delay characteristics of the proposed system for various kinds of traffic are evaluated by a computer simulation.