Reconfigurability of ShuffleNets in multi-star implementation

The implementation of ShuffleNets using a single star-coupler and slowly tunable transceivers implies maximum reconfigurability. By “maximum reconfigurability”, the authors mean that any node can exchange its logical position in the network with another node by simply retuning their transceivers. This allows one to reconfigure the logical topology to adapt to the changing traffic pattern. In a multi-star network, however, one does not have the same degree of freedom for reconfiguration because one is not free to exchange the logical identities of an arbitrary pair of nodes. In the paper, the authors investigate the reconfigurability issue in the multi-star implementation of ShuffleNet. They show how one can attain maximum reconfigurability by properly choosing the system parameters. An algorithm for channels allocation is proposed to maximize reconfigurability under a particular configuration