Design of a multistage optical packet switch

Optical packet switching is considered as a means to achieve high speed net working in future optical multi-service networks. Optical switches of limit ed size are feasible with present-day photonic technology, so solutions for the design and implementation of large switches are proposed here. They ar e based on a multistage architecture built using small switching modules wi th output queuing, organised according to a Clos topology. Many degrees of freedom are available for switch design and they are exploited to achieve p erformance optimisation in relation to packet loss. Simulation and analytic al tools are developed to evaluate switch architecture performance. Results and application examples are given to show the feasibility of the multista ge architecture for optical networking.