PHOTONIC PACKET SWITCHES - ARCHITECTURES AND EXPERIMENTAL IMPLEMENTATIONS

Photonic packet switches offer high speed, data late and format transp arency, and flexibility required by future computer communications and cell-based telecommunications networks. In this paper, we review expe rimental progress in state-of-the-art photonic packet switches with an emphasis on all-optical guided-wave systems. The term all-optical imp lies that the data portion of a packet remains in optical format from the source to the destination. While the data remain all-optical, both optical and optoelectronic techniques have been used to process packe t routing functions based on extremely simple routing protocols. An ov erview of the design issues for all-optical photonic packet switching is given and contrasted with electronic packet switch implementations. Low-level functions that have been experimentally implemented include routing, contention resolution, synchronization, and header regenerat ion. System level demonstrations, including centralized photonic switc hing and distributed all-optical multihop networks, will be reviewed.