In this two-part paper, we consider SDL constructions of optical queues with a limited number of recirculations through the optical switches and the fiber delay lines. We show that the constructions of certain types of optical queues, including linea
r compressors, linear decompressors, and 2-to-1 FIFO multiplexers, under a simple packet routing scheme and under the constraint of a limited number of recirculations can be transformed into equivalent integer representation problems under a corresponding constraint. Given $M$ and $k$, the problem of finding an emph{optimal} construction, in the sense of maximizing the maximum delay (resp., buffer size), among our constructions of linear compressors/decompressors (resp., 2-to-1 FIFO multiplexers) is equivalent to the problem of finding an optimal sequence ${dbf^*}_1^M$ in $Acal_M$ (resp., $Bcal_M$) such that $B({dbf^*}_1^M;k)=max_{dbf_1^Min Acal_M}B(dbf_1^M;k)$ (resp., $B({dbf^*}_1^M;k)=max_{dbf_1^Min Bcal_M}B(dbf_1^M;k)$), where $Acal_M$ (resp., $Bcal_M$) is the set of all sequences of fiber delays allowed in our constructions of linear compressors/decompressors (resp., 2-to-1 FIFO multiplexers). In Part I, we propose a class of emph{greedy} constructions of linear compressors/decompressors and 2-to-1 FIFO multiplexers by specifying a class $Gcal_{M,k}$ of sequences such that $Gcal_{M,k}subseteq Bcal_Msubseteq Acal_M$ and each sequence in $Gcal_{M,k}$ is obtained recursively in a greedy manner. We then show that every optimal construction must be a greedy construction. In Part II, we further show that there are at most two optimal constructions and give a simple algorithm to obtain the optimal construction(s).
