Photonic packet switching: An overview

The application of photonic technologies to packet switching offers the pot ential of very large switch capacity in the terabit per second range. The m erging of packet switching with photonic technologies opens up the possibil ity of packet switching in transparent photonic media, in which packets rem ain in optical form without undergoing optoelectronic conversion. This pape r reviews recent work on photonic packet switching. Different approaches to photonic packet switching and key design issues are discussed.