Jb. Jacob et al., SYSTEM-DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF A LARGE MODULAR PHOTONIC ATM SWITCH, European transactions on telecommunications, 7(6), 1996, pp. 565-573
A photonic ATM switching node based on the Fibre Delay Line switching
element developed in the framework of the RACE project ATMOS (ATM Opti
cal Switching) is described. The feasibility of this switching element
has been proved within the physical limitation of present day technol
ogy to support up to 16 input and 16 output lines and a buffer capacit
y of at least 16 cells for each output. In this paper various intercon
nection options are discussed with the aim of a large, high throughput
switch implementation. In particular a Clos architecture is chosen fo
r the design of a 256 x 256 switching fabric operating at 2.5 Gbit/s a
nd its performance is evaluated by means of simulation in a random and
bursty traffic environment. It is demonstrated that a multiplane conf
iguration of optical matrices followed by an efficient concentration s
trategy is capable of meeting the target ATM requirements, that is cel
l loss probability less than 10(-9) with load up to 0.8. A detailed de
sign of the switch and its complexity evaluation are also given.