DESIGN AND CHANNEL CONSTRAINT ANALYSIS OF ULTRAFAST MULTIHOP ALL-OPTICAL NETWORKS WITH DEFLECTION ROUTING EMPLOYING SOLITONS

Regular two-connected multihop transparent optical networks using ultr ahigh bit-rate single-wavelength on/off keying are addressed. A novel solution for packet and node architecture is introduced to take full a dvantage of the recently demonstrated optical samplers and of the elec tronic processing capability. Channel transmission error arguments sho w how the size of these nonregenerative networks employing deflection routing is limited for a given optical bit rate. These limits are quan tified for the Manhattan Street Network and ShuffleNet employing solit ons. An upper bound on network performance in terms of maximum achieva ble bit rate and throughput for a given packet error rate is evaluated by taking into account the soliton self-frequency shift due to Raman scattering, the jitter due to amplified spontaneous emission noise, th e short-range interaction, and their interplay. Results show that if t he packet error rate is to be bounded below 10(-6), the node-to-node f iber span cannot exceed a few kilometers for network sizes greater tha n 64 nodes when the optical bit rate is as high as 100 Gb/s.