HIGHLY PARALLEL OPTICS IN ATM SWITCHING-NETWORKS

The use of an optical crossbar provides a means of overcoming the inte rmodule interconnection problems of very large (terabit/s) electronic ATM switches. The operation of the hybrid electro-optic switching modu le (ETOSET) is described and the place of ETOSET in a network context is discussed. A novel control algorithm minimises contention for switc h paths and gives a low control processing overhead. Performance is ev aluated in terms of switch size, cell loss and control overhead.