Optical switch fabrics for ultra-high-capacity IP routers

Abstract

Next-generation switches and routers may rely on optical switch fabrics to overcome scalability problems that arise in sizing traditional electrical backplanes into the terabit regime. In this paper, we present and discuss several optical switch fabric technologies. We describe a promising approach based on arrayed waveguide gratings and fast wavelength tuning and explain the challenges with respect to technical and commercial viability. Finally, we demonstrate an optical switch fabric capable of 1.2-Tb/s throughput and show packet switching with four ports running at 40 Gb/s each.

Cross-Layer Proactive Packet Protection Switching

“…To enable the proposed PPT mechanisms in future networks using hybrid opto-electronic packet routers [20][21][22], we demonstrate several key technologies using the router architecture shown in Fig. 3(a).…”

WDM based multigigabit optical backplane for on-board applications

“…However, the advantages of WDM are not extensively investigated for chip-to-chip and board-to-board interconnects. In [4] a WDM based optical backplane for high-speed IP routers is proposed using passive routing of data packets through the network. A prototype system working at a data-rate of 40Gbps is presented using a PC-based controller to guarantee collision free operation.…”

Wavelength-Routed Switching for 25-Gbit/s Optical Packets Using a Compact Transmitter Integrating a Parallel-Ring-Resonator Tunable Laser and an InGaAlAs EAM

“…An N × N optical switch in an optical router should ideally have small size, low power consumption, high-speed switching capability, data-format transparency, high reliability and scalability, as well as ease of control and low cost. Aiming at realizing such an ideal optical switch, so far, a variety of optical switching technologies have been proposed, including optical switches consisting of cascading 1 × 2/2 × 2 switches in crossbar/tree/Benes/Banyan architecture [7], broadcast-andselect switches [8], wavelength-routing switches [9] and phased-array switches [10]. Among these optical switching technologies, the wavelength-routing switch is attractive as its port count can be increased without additional loss, and would thus allow a higher throughput.…”