A scalable and high capacity all-optical packet switch: Design, analysis, and control

In this paper, a modular and scalable all-optical packet switch (AOPS) is p roposed. The range of its capacity can be easily scaled from gigabit per se cond to multi-terabits per second. Due to its broadcast-and-select property , the proposed AOPS is capable of performing a multicast function. By takin g the advantage of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), this architectur e can provide the best network performance using a limited number of optica l fiber delay lines as buffers. To perform the header replacement function, a novel all-optical header replacement unit (HRU) is introduced to be inte grated with the switching function. The proposed HRU is shared by all the i nputs which provides cost advantages. In addition, we present a generic con trol scheme for the proposed AOPS. To implement the function of the AOPS, t wo possible approaches, based on the design of wavelength conversion pools (WCPs), are presented and their cascadability performances are compared. Ou r simulations show that the proposed AOPS with an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) based WCP provides better cascadability performance than the one wit h a star coupler based WCP. We conclude that, based on the status of curren t optical and electronic technologies, the proposed architecture is feasibl e to be implemented, and can be a good candidate for future packet switchin g solutions.