Optical packet switching by all-optical header recognition using 1.55-μm polarization bistable VCSEL

Bit error rates of flip-flop operations with AND gate functionality using a 1.55-µm polarization bistable VCSEL

“…All-optical flip-flop having AND gate functionality with three optical inputs of data, set, and reset signals have more sophisticated functions, because only the data bit, whose timing is adjusted to the set pulse, is memorized. Thus, it can be used as optical sampling memory for optical drop and insert [1], for optical buffer memory [2,3,4], and for storage of the header information of a packet [5,6,7].…”

“…This memory operation was applied to all-optical header recognition for optical packet switching at 1.55 µm. Payloads with 500-Mb/s RZ pseudo-random bit-sequence (PRBS) [5] and 40-Gb/s NRZ PRBS [6] formats were switched to two designated ports according to the state of one bit in a 4-bit header with the 500-Mb/s RZ format. Recently, a 2-bit header recognition and packet switching have been demonstrated using two 1.55-µm polarization bistable VCSELs [7].…”