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Design and optimization of VLC based small-world data centers

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Abstract

The visible light communication (VLC) has the potential to provide dense and fast connectivity at low cost. In this paper, we propose a novel VLC enabled Wireless Small-World Data Center (WSWDC). It employs VLC links to achieve a fully wireless data center network (DCN) across racks for the first time. The using of VLC links eliminates hierarchical switches and inter-rack cables, and thus reducing hardware investment, as well as maintenance cost. More precisely, to simplify the configuration and control operations, we propose three DCN design rationales: (1) fully-wireless, all inter-rack links are wireless; (2) easy-deployable, it is not necessary to change the existing infrastructure inside data center; (3) plug-and-play, no extra centralized control operations are required. Previous proposals, however, cannot achieve the three rationales simultaneously. To this end, we first use regular VLC links to interconnect racks as a regular grid DCN and optimize the rack placement to shorten the average path length and the network diameter. To further exploiting the benefits of VLC links, a few random VLC links are carefully introduced to update the wireless grid DCN as a wireless small-world DCN. To avoid the potential interference among VLC links, we deploy VLC transceivers at different heights on the top of each rack. In this way, VLC links would not interfere with others at each height level. Moreover, we design a greedy but efficient routing method for any pair of racks using their identifiers as inputs. Comprehensive evaluation results indicate that our WSWDC exhibits good topological properties and network performance.

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Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation for Outstanding Excellent young scholars of China (61422214), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61772544), National Basic Research Program (973 program) (2014CB347800), the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (2016JJ1002), and the Guangxi Cooperative Innovation Center of cloud computing and Big Data (YD16507 and YD17X11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Science and Technology on Information System Engineering Laboratory, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China

    Yudong Qin, Deke Guo, Lailong Luo & Geyao Cheng

  2. School of Electronic Engineering, Naval University of Engineering, Wuhan, 430033, China

    Zeliu Ding

Authors
  1. Yudong Qin
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  2. Deke Guo
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  3. Lailong Luo
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  4. Geyao Cheng
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  5. Zeliu Ding
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Deke Guo.

Additional information

Yudong Qin received the BS degree in management science and engineering from National University of Defense Technology, China in 2016. He is currently working towards the MS degree in College of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, China. His research interests include data centers and software-defined networks.

Deke Guo received the BS degree in industry engineering from the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China in 2001, and the PhD degree in management science and engineering from the National University of Defense Technology, China in 2008. He is currently a Professor with the College of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology. His research interests include distributed systems, software-defined networking, data center networking, wireless and mobile systems, and interconnection networks. He is a member of the ACM.

Lailong Luo received the BS and MS degrees from the School of Information System and Management, National University of Defense Technology, China in 2013 and 2015, respectively, where he is currently pursuing the PhD degree with the College of Systems Engineering. His current research interests include data centers and software defined networks.

Geyao Cheng received the BS degree in management science and engineering from National University of Defense Technology, China in 2017. She is currently working towards the MS degree in College of Systems Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, China. Her research interests include data centers and software-defined networks.

Zeliu Ding received the MS and PhD degrees from the National University of Defense Technology, China in 2007 and 2012, respectively. He is currently a lecturer with the School of Electronic Engineering, Navy University of Engineering, China. His research interests include complex information system, cloud computing and data center networks.

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Qin, Y., Guo, D., Luo, L. et al. Design and optimization of VLC based small-world data centers. Front. Comput. Sci. 13, 1034–1047 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-018-7315-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-018-7315-6

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