Scalable and data format agnostic optical packet switch sub-systems for optical packet switched networks

We investigate photonic packet switches that allow scaling to a large number of input and output ports. The suggested switch architectures are based on technology that has already been demonstrated. We focus on a simple Spanke node architecture. Scalable, low latency optical packet switches sub-systems capable to switch optical packets with multiple modulation formats are reviewed. The optical packet switch sub-system employs in-band labeling to allow for transparent routing of packets with multiple data formats and data bit-rates. Packets employing in-band labels can be processed without the need to reconfigure the label processor and the switch when changing data format and bit-rate. The label processor is based on asynchronous optical signal processing in combination with a simple electronic combinatory network. This makes the label processor capable to process a large number of labels with low latency time (<3 ns) without complicated and power hungry high speed packet clock recovery and serializer/deserializer circuits. Results show error-free operation of 1 × 64 and eventually 1 × 4096 by using a fat tree configuration optical packet switch subsystems for 160 Gb/s RZ-OOK, 320 Gb/s NRZ-OOK, 120 (12×10) Gb/s DPSK and 480 (12×40) Gb/s OFDM multi-wavelength packets. Photonic integrated devices required for scaling the optical packet switch sub-systems will be reviewed.