Simultaneous erasure and rewriting of a subcarrier-multiplexed label in an all-optical label swapping scheme.

A simplified all-optical label swapping scheme is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for all-optical packet switching. This scheme is based on the sub-carrier label multiplexing technique but it significantly reduces the cost and complexity of the label erasure and rewriting process at the intermediate nodes. This is accomplished using a shared interferometric filter for all wavelength channels to separate the payloads and labels as well as using gain-saturated RSOAs for label erasure and rewriting. Label swapping process is realized through re-assigning optical subcarriers to each output wavelength channel and rewriting the new label with RSOAs. The BER-free transmissions experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme.