| Summary: | In this thesis, we investigate the suitability of several routing schemes and network topologies for a high speed free-space photonic network that is currently being developed at McGill. === We find that deflection routing is a very suitable routing strategy since it does not require expensive buffers at network nodes, and it does not experience deadlock. === After reviewing current research in deflection routing for a variety of network topologies, we conclude that the 11 $ times$ 11-torus, the 5-symbol star graph, and the 7-dimensional hypercube are attractive candidates for a photonic network of approximately 120 nodes. === Then, we determine efficient embeddings of these three networks into an optical hyperplane which hosts the communication channels of the network in one and two dimensions. While trying to embed the 5-star into the two-dimensional hyperplane, we discover an embedding strategy which allows any n-star to be embedded into any d-dimensional grid of size at most ${ underbrace{n times ... times n} sb{d-1}} times (n!/d!)$ without any bends between neighbours in the n-star. === Through simulation, we determine that for a network size of about 120 nodes, the hypercube in seven dimensions offers the most dependable behaviour since its throughput is always above 99.6% and the delay is never greater than 20% of the average distance. However, when we allocate an equal number of communication channels to each node, we find that the star graph offers superior performance due to its low degree and diameter, and when we assign an equal number of communication channels to the three topologies as a whole, the torus outperforms the star and cube due to its efficient embeddings in the hyperplane.
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