A-MWM: A Low Complexity Packet-Mode Scheduling Algorithm

In a packet switching system, arriving packets have variable lengths. They are segmented into fixed size cells before being switched. In packet-mode scheduling, cells from a packet should be delivered contiguously. Even though fixed-size cell scheduling has been well studied, packet-mode scheduling has more advantages: it has a lower implementation cost and higher throughput. In this paper, we first propose a centralized algorithm for an input-queued switch with a time complexity of O(N). By making some simple modifications, the complexity can be reduced to O(1). We prove that the algorithm can stabilize the system for admissible i.i.d arrivals with any finite packet size distribution. We then extend the idea and show that it can be implemented in a buffered crossbar switch in a distributed manner. Our simulation results show that it can provide good delay performance for different traffic patterns with different packet size distributions.