Performance measures and scheduling policies in ring networks

A unidirectional ring network is considered. A node may transmit at most one packet per slot to its downstream neighbor. Potentially all nodes may transmit at the same slot. The achievable performance is studied and policies are proposed for both the evacuation mode and continual operation. In the evacuation mode each node has initially an amount of packets destined for every other node of the ring, and no more packets are generated later. It is shown that the furthest destination first (FDF) policy, that gives priority to the packet with the longest way to go at each node, minimizes the time until every packet reaches its destination. Furthermore it is shown that the closest destination first (CDF) policy, that gives priority to the packet with the shortest way to go at each node, minimizes the average packet delivery time. A formula for the optimal evacuation time is obtained. The continual operation of the ring is considered then where packets are generated according to some arrival process. For any arrival sample path, the PDF maximizes the fraction of the time at which the ring is empty. The performance analysis of individual origin-destination traffic streams under FDF is facilitated based on the following. For each traffic stream, a single server priority queue is identified such that the average sojourn time of the traffic stream in the ring is equal to the aggregate transmission time plus the queueing delay of the low priority stream in the queue. Formulas for the sojourn time are obtained for iid arrivals. The performance of CDF and FIFO in continual operation is studied by simulation. It turns out that the CDF, minimum delay policy for the evacuation, has the worst performance in continual operation