HIGH-DIMENSIONALITY SHARED-MEDIUM PHOTONIC SWITCH

A space-division photonic switch which has the potential to achieve hi gh dimensionality is presented. The proposed switch, which resembles a collapsed network, does not use optical crosspoints; rather a dedicat ed path is provided for all input/output port connections on a common high-bandwidth transmission medium. This eliminates the restrictions i mposed by 2 x 2 switching elements in classical space-division switchi ng fabrics. The demonstration of a fully connected 120 x 120 space-div ision time-multiplexed photonic switch is reported. The dimensionality and blocking performance of a shared-medium photonic switch that uses time-multiplexing is analyzed.