Hybrid maximal matching for input buffered crossbar switches

To alleviate the problems of network bottleneck in high speed networks, it is important to have faster switching and certainly efficient scheduling algorithms. Optical switches are becoming more popular because of their faster switching speeds and higher reliability as compared to their electronic counterpart. Suitable scheduling algorithms are needed to be developed that will improve the utilization of the switch bandwidth, as well as reduce the scheduling overhead. However, most of the present scheduling algorithms try to optimize either the switch bandwidth or the overhead. In this paper, we propose one new scheduling algorithm named as Hybrid Maximal Matching (HMM) that provides a perfect balance between these two performance criteria and proves itself suitable for large size optical switches. The proposed HMM algorithm is simple to implement and arrives with a complexity of at most O(N-5) for an NxN input queued crossbar switch.