Optical burst-switched WDM networks with channel bonding

This paper presents a technique to transmit large optical bursts over several wavelength channels in a parallel manner, which we refer to as optical burst switching with channel bonding (OBS-CB). It uses switching in the time domain only, while the wavelength domain is used to increase the transport rate, and thus to decrease the time required for transmission of a data burst. Different structures of the transceiver unit for edge nodes as well as methods for burst assembly and transmission are proposed and discussed. Three architectures of core nodes are described and studied with respect of their cascadability. The most important system parameters and limitations are discussed.