IMPROVED WDM PACKET SWITCH ARCHITECTURES WITH OUTPUT CHANNEL GROUPING

We present two switching schemes for routing optical information signa ls that are transported by wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) netwo rks with and without grouping of optical channels of different wavelen gth allocations. A brief account of two WDM packet switches without ch annel grouping are briefly described with the use of a neural network controller for routing control to illustrate the necessity for groupin g wavelength channels. This leads to designs of improved WDM packet sw itch architectures which are described in details for wavelength routi ng, broadcasting and selecting wavelength channels. Optical channels w ith different wavelength allocations are grouped and appropriate routi ng algorithms are designed to enhance the throughput efficiency of the packet switch. Computer simulation is carried out to evaluate the per formance of a WDM packet switching system with output channel grouping which exhibits only single intermediate stage architecture.