An optical packet switch based on wavelength routing and optical waveband conversion is demonstrated. The switch performs header extraction, packet routing, and regeneration and exhibits very good physical performance.
Optical packet switching is commonly considered as a possible technology for future telecommunication networks, due to its compatibility with bursty traffic, eg Internet protocol (IP), and efficient use of wavelength channels. Current transport networks are voice-optimised and connection oriented, however the amount of data traffic is rapidly increasing, resulting in a continuous increase of average traffic through major exchanges exceeding 30% per annum (in Europe). Thus optical packet switching is seen as a future technology that will support diverse traffic profiles and give more efficient bandwidth utilisation through its ability to provide multiplexing at the packet level. In recent years the significance of optical packet switching as an emerging technology has been identified and researched by a number of research groups. Earlier optical packet switching demonstrators presented switching of mainly ATM compatible synchronously transmitted packets at bit rates up to 2.5b/s with the optical header encoded either in series or in parallel to the payload using the sub-carrier modulation technique. More recent projects have demonstrated switching capabilities at 10Gb/s using more advanced approaches with special encoding schemes for header and header detection, together with sophisticated control mechanisms for contention resolution. The capability of switching optical packets at bit rates up to 160Gb/s has recently been demonstrated. This paper discusses the architectures currently proposed for high speed optical packet switching, including the key techniques of header processing and payload switching. The focus is on a high speed demonstrator [OPSnet] capable of operation at rates >100 Gb/s.
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