Design and Implementation of a Fault Tolerant ATM Switch for B-ISDN

Abstract

We present a new method to build a fault tolerant ATM switch. By this method, we can build and ATM switch which has two non-overlappping paths between each input/output pair. The key component in the proposed switch is a 2×2 FTSE (Fault Tolerant Switching Element) which can be the basic building block for high speed ATM switches. The FTSE is made with the ability of fault tolerance by adding a few spares to the traditional Switching Element (SE). We can construct an MIN which has two levels of fault tolerance ability and the redundant paths are in proportional to the network size. By mathematical analysis, we conclude that our ATM switch uses less SEs and has more redundant paths than other ATM switches. By VHDL simulation, we have verified the functionality of the switch. We also synthesize the ATM switch to evaluate its delay and area. The experimental results demonstrate that the reliability/cost ratio of the fault tolerant FTSE-based ATM switch is better than that of other switches.