Optical implementation of asynchronous-transfer-mode header-error control

The asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is a promising technique for broadband switching that is capable of supporting high-bit-rate multimedia services. Progress in all-optical parallel processing shows that photonics may be us ed in the future in full-functionality ATM switching nodes. All-optical swi tching fabrics and buffers have already been demonstrated. Fewer studies ha ve been dedicated to ATM header-processing functions. As an example of phot onic header processing, the implementation of a header-error control (HEC) subsystem by means of an optical circuit is investigated. Although traditio nal electronic decoders perform HEC in a serial mode, the architecture chos en for the optical HEC subsystem is based on parallelism, and an appropriat e parallel-decoding algorithm was used in designing it. (C) 2000 Optical So ciety of America.