A MODULAR TBIT S TDM-WDM PHOTONIC ATM SWITCH USING OPTICAL OUTPUT BUFFERS/

The modular and growable photonic ATM switch architecture described in this paper uses both time-division and wavelength-division multiplexi ng technologies, so the switch capacity can be expanded in both the ti me and frequency domains. It uses a new implementation of output buffe ring scheme that overcomes the bottleneck in receiving and storing con current ultrafast optical cells. The capacity in one stage of a switch with this architecture can be increased from 32 gigabits per second t o several terabits per second in a modular fashion. The proposed switc h structure with output channel grouping can greatly reduce the amount of hardware and still guarantee the cell sequence.