A Digital Cross Connect (DCS) Switch for Multicast
and Broadcast Traffic
Gunjan Thakur
Vemana Institute of Technology,
Bangalore, Karnataka,
Email Id: gunjanmoni@gmail.com
Dr. Mrinal Sarvagya
Reva University, Bangalore, Karnataka,
Email Id: mrinalsarvagya@gmail.com
Abstract— The tremendous growth of broadcast and
multicast traffic applications (audio, video, IPTV,
teleconferencing etc) over the internet has created an imperative
demand for high performance switches. Various switching
architectures have been proposed for multicast traffic support. A
Digital Cross Connect (DCS) is a crossbar-based switching device
and has been considered the most suitable architecture because
of its low cost and internal multicast capabilities. In this paper we
have proposed the design of a Digital Cross Connect (DCS)
switch for broadcast and multicast traffic support. The proposed
DCS design has been simulated for different traffic modes
(multicast and broadcast) using Verilog Hardware Description
Langauage (HDL) in Xilinx software. Further, the design can be
implemented on the FPGA board in order to achieve flexibility,
adaptibility and scalability.
Keywords—multicast, broadcast, crossbar switch ,scalability,
flexibiltiy .
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years we have seen a large number of applications
supporting the use of multicasting. These rapidly growing popular
applications such as sharing of audio & video, group based
interaction, online gaming, video conferencing, streaming of
multimedia etc results in tremendous increase of multicast traffic
over the internet. At the same time the advancement in
technology offers a wide range of broadcasting applications and
services such as live video streaming, distance learning, IPTV etc.
Therefore, the fusion of broadcasting and multicasting traffic has
created an imperative demand for high performance switches
capable of handling point-to-multipoint communication
efficiently. As a result, numerous switching architectures have
been proposed for efficient multicast traffic support. A Digital
Cross Connect (DCS) is a crossbar based switch and has been
considered the most suitable switching architecture owing to its
scalability, low cost and intrinsic multicast capabilities [1,2]. The
crossbar switch allows simultaneous connection between any
input ports and all the output ports. DCS has various applications
which includes Mobile Switching Centers (MSC), LAN
connectivity, Broadband Exchanges, Landline Exchanges,
Internet hubs etc.
987-1-5090-3646-2/16/$31.00©2016IEEE
Dr. Preeta Sharan
Oxford College of Engineering,
Bangalore, Karnataka,
Email Id: sharanpreeta@gmail.com
II. RELATED WORK
Various scheduling algorithm for crossbar switches has
been proposed [3-7] in order to deal with multicast traffic. A
lot of work has been done to determine the efficient queuing
scheme for cross connect switches [8]. It has been found that
buffered crossbar switches provides higher throughput and has
simpler algorithm [9-13] for multicast traffic support. In [14-
16] the authors have proposed and implemented a
reconfigurable crossbar switch for point-to-multipoint
communication. These authors have mainly focused on
multicast traffic. In this paper we have proposed the design
and simulation of a comprehensive Digital Cross Connect
(DCS) switch for multicast and broadcast traffic. The
proposed DCS can also support the advanced call feature such
as call forwarding. Further, the proposed design can be
implemented on FPGA board in order to achieve flexibility,
adaptability and scalability
III. PROPOSED DIGITAL CROSS CONNECT SWITCH (DCS)
Switches are considered as the building blocks for any
communication network and performs the scheduling of data
from one point to another point. Designing a switch capable of
scheduling different types of traffic yet providing high
efficiency as well as fairness is a major challenge.
MS0 M1 (Multicast mode)
2:4 Decoder for M2 (broadcast mode)
Mode Select
M3 (call forward)
MS1 M4 (don’t care)
Fig.1. Mode Selector for DCS
A 2:4 decoder is used to select a particular mode for the
crossbar switch i.e. broadcast mode, multicast mode and call
forwarding mode as shown in Figure 1. Depending on the
input state of the decoder the switch will perform different
operations as indicated by indicated by Table 1.
 Table 1 Mode Selection Table Figure 2(b) shows the DCS operation in multicast mode
where switching of data is performed with respect to fan out
MS0 MS1 Selected Modes set of the multicast cell.
0 0 Multicast Mode

0 1 Broadcast Mode

1 0 Call Forward
Don’t Care
1 1
(X X)

A. Multicast Mode
The Multicasting is the ability of a switch to transmit the
data to a defined set of recipients with minimal cost in terms
of data processing and scheduling time.
A
X

B X
Z

C Y
Z
Fig. 3(a) RTL schematic of multicast mode

D
X

X Y Z

Fig. 2(a) M X N Crossbar Switch (M=4, N=3)

Figure 2(a) shows a M X N multicast crossbar switch

which consists of M input ports and N output ports. It is
assume that each multicasting cell contains a set of output
ports to which the data has to be transmitted. This set of
selected output ports is called the Fanout set of an input cell.

Input Port
Output Port

B X

C Y

D Z

Fig. 3(b) Circuit of multicast mode

Figure 3(a) and 3(b) shows the RTL schematic and Circuit
DCS (Multicast Mode) diagram for multicast mode respectively.

Fig. 2 (b) DCS in Multicast Mode

 Fig. 4 Simulation Waveform of Multicast Mode

The waveform in Fig. 4 shows that during the first time

slot the data of input port A is transferred to its fan out set i.e.
X and Y. In the similar way with the arrival of the second time
slot the data of B is transferred to output ports X and Z. The
data of C is send to Y, Z and data of D is send to X, Z during
the third and fourth time slot respectively. The simulation
results shows that each cell has been delivered only to the
selected set of destination output ports.
B. Broadcast Mode
This mode refers to simultaneous transmission of data to
all the connected devices in a specific network. In order to
support broadcasting, the switch must be able to execute the
replication of data or packet such that all the recipients can
receive their respective packets. Broadcasting services such as
video streaming, IPTV, distance learning etc are expected to
dominate in the near future. Fig. 6(a) RTL Schematic of Broadcast Mode

Input Port
Output Port
A

B X

C Y

D Z

DCS (Broadcast Mode)

Fig. 5 DCS in Broadcast Mode

Figure 6(b) Circuit Diagram of Broadcast Mode
As shown in Figure 5 the cross connect switch consists of
4 input ports (A,B,C,D) and 3 output ports (X,Y,Z). Each Figure 6(a) and (b) shows the RTL schematic and circuit
broadcasting data or packet arriving at any of the input port diagram of Broadcast Mode.
will be transmitted to all the output ports connected to the
switch.
 Figure 7 Simulation Waveform of Multicast Mode

As shown in waveform of Figure 7, during the first time

slot the data from A is transmitted to all the output ports (X,
Y, Z ) with respect to their availability. Similarly, the data
from B is transferred to all the output ports (X,Y,Z) during the
next time slot and so on.
C. Call Forwarding
Call Forwarding is a feature which allows the users to
redirect the calls to another destination.

Fig. 9(b) Circuit Diagram for Call Forwarding Operation

Fig. 8 Basic Call Forwarding Operation

Figure 8 shows the basic call forwarding operation. In this mode

whenever X is busy, all the call request for X will be redirected
to Y. Figure 9 (a) & (b) shows the RTL schematic and circuit
diagram of call forwarding mode respectively.

Figure 10 Simulation Waveform of Call Forward Mode

Figure 10 shows the simulation result for call forward

operation. It is assumed that A is connected to X (i.e. X is
busy), meanwhile B wants to get connected to X. In this
case the data from B will be forwarded to Y.

Figure 9(a) RTL Schematic of Call Forwarding Mode

 IV. CONCLUSION
As a part of our DCS research work, we have proposed the
design of a crossbar-based Digital Cross Connect (DCS)
switch to handle multicast and broadcast traffic modes. The
proposed design has been simulated using Verilog HDL for
different traffic types and the results shows that the DCS
switch can support the multicast and broadcast traffic. The
proposed switch can also support an advanced call feature
known as call forwarding. Further, the design can be
implemented on the FPGA board to achieve flexibility and
scalability.
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