A PHOTONIC ATM SWITCH ARCHITECTURE FOR WDM OPTICAL NETWORKS

Optical switching networks to transport vast amounts of information ar e important for B-ISDN services. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM ) is emerging as the dominant technology for future optical networks. A large capacity photonic ATM switch architecture using WDM technology is proposed in this paper. The proposed switch is suitable for WDM op tical ATM networks, that is, an input and an output of the switch are wavelength division multiplexed. The basic switch module of the propos ed switch has a simple architecture, and reduces the amount of a buffe r hardware by introducing the WDM concept.