A Photonic Knockout Switch For High-Speed Packet Networks.
01 January 1988
Recent advances in photonics have prompted new widespread interest in photonic switches with capacities orders of magnitude higher than possible with electronics. Considerable attention has been focussed on photonic circuit switching. In this memorandum, we consider the case of high-performance packet switch which employs a photonic cross-connect fabric to route very wideband data packets from input to output. Packet contention is accomplished via a much slower electronic controller, based on the Knockout Principle operating in parallel with the optical cross-connect. Specifically, we propose the use of a wavelength-division-multiplex fabric whereby high-speed (2-4 Gb/s) packets are regenerated before modulating a single-frequency laser at each switch input.