All-optical packet switching and label buffering by MMI-BLD optical flip-flop

Abstract

All-optical packet switching and label buffering have been demonstrated using multimode interference bistable laser diode optical flip-flops and all-optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer switches. The optical flip-flop buffered the injected optical label for the one packet duration and drove the all-optical switch through cross-phase modulation to switch the optical packet. Error-free operation for output 10-Gb/s optical packets from the switch was obtained with negligible power penalty. The presented packet switching has potential of ultrafast switching and transparency of data rate and format, and will be useful in the future optical packet switching networks.