PHOTONICS APPLICATIONS IN SWITCHING - AN ATM OPTICAL NODE

An ATM optical node architecture that carries out cell routing and buf fering by photonic means, controlled by electronic circuits, is presen ted. An evolutionary approach, where cell aggregation and compression are introduced to achieve a large throughput, with a high performance, is also described. And we report experimental results that demonstrat e the feasibility of all the relevant photonic functions, based on adv anced optoelectronic devices, namely: fast wavelength reassignment, su itable for multigigabit operation, based on fast tunable lasers and se miconductor optical amplifiers, high bit rate packet storage in a mult iwavelength fiber loop memory including fast optical gates; dynamic wa velength selection, based on distributed feedback (DFB) filters with n anosecond tuning response; and all optical demultiplexing of multigiga bit/s time division multiplexing (TDM) signals by means of saturated s emiconductor optical amplifiers.