Scheduling nonuniform traffic in a packet-switching system with small propagation delay

A new model of nonuniform traffic is introduced for a single-hop packet-switching system. This traffic model allows arbitrary traffic streams subject only to a constraint on the number of data packets which can arrive at any individual source in the system or for any individual destination in the system over time periods of specified length. The nonuniform traffic model is flexible enough to cover integrated data networks carrying diverse classes of data. The system model is rather general, and includes passive optical star wavelength-division networks. Transmission algorithms are introduced for a single-hop packet-switching system with such nonuniform traffic and with propagation delay that is negligible relative to the packet length. The algorithms are based on collision-free scheduling of packets using graph-matching algorithms since the global state of the system is known to all stations at any time. A companion paper introduces transmission algorithms for the same network and traffic model, except with a propagation delay that is very large compared to the packet length.