Abstract:  For both optical and packet heterogeneous paths existing in satellite opticalelectrical hybrid switching system, the method of independently calculating the optical/packet switching path can′t comprehensively consider the availability of the system's path resources, which may lead to the selection of unoptimized switching paths with high paths blocking probability, even may cause a crash of the switching system. The homogeneous path influence factor and the heterogeneous path influence factor were defined to quantitatively measure path weights. In addition, the number of subpaths and the path transformation parameters of the switching system were used as constraints. Then, by constructing a heterogeneous path resource weight function, the load balancing capability of the paths in the satellite heterogeneous switching system was accurately evaluated. Moreover, the indicators of load balancing degree and the path blocking probability were simulated based on switching structure simulation model by using MATLAB and OMNET. The simulation results show that, compared with traditional routing and wavelength assignment algorithms, the load balancing heterogeneous path algorithm can achieve stable performance curves under deterministic service requests and effectively reduce the average load balancing degree of the system by about 32% and the average path blocking probability by about 51% under a specific service request. 

Key words: satellite network, hybrid switching, laser/packets heterogeneous path, path algorithm, load balance