A 2.56-TB S MULTIWAVELENGTH AND SCALABLE SWITCH-FABRIC FOR FAST PACKET-SWITCHING NETWORKS/

We propose an implementation of a terabits-per-second crossbar-equival ent switch-fabric for packet-switching networks, It consists of switch -modules employing semiconductor optical amplifier gates (SOAG's), arr ayed waveguide grating routers, and multiple wavelength-channels, It o ffers large modularity and a small internal loss. The number of SOAG's in a 256 x 256 switch-fabric is one-eighth that of a conventional swi tch-fabric, Scalability up to 2.56 Tb/s is demonstrated by a 10 Gb/s t ransmission experiment in which the input level into the switch-module was observed to possess a dynamic range of 6 dB.