Field Trial of 80 (10 x 8) Gbps Colored Optical Packet Switching of 4K&2K Uncompressed Streaming

We demonstrate for the first time a field trial of 80 (10 x 8) Gbps colored optical packet switching of 4K and 2K uncompressed streaming using SOA based broadcast-and-select switch and optical-code label processing. Introduction “4K” motion pictures (3840x2160 pixels), 4 times pixel counts of high-definition (HD), are promising imaging technology for digital cinema, computer visualization, and tele-medical applications. Uncompressed streaming which requires 4K motion pictures requires about 6Gbps, enables us to share the image over networks with lossless quality in real-time manner. The feasibility of point-to-point 4K uncompressed streaming over IP network has been demonstrated in these years [1]. Because of its high bandwidth, real-time point-tomultipoint transmission with high-speed switching capability of uncompressed 6Gbps 4K motion pictures still remains a challenge. Optical packet switching (OPS) is a very attractive technology to realize such high bandwidth, low latency, and fine granularity for high-performance computer networks. A wide variety of OPS schemes have been developed to route and forward IP packets directly in the optical domain [2-3]. However, it is difficult to realize OPS system because practical optical buffers are not available. Recently, we have proposed and demonstrated the colored optical packet switching using Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) based broadcast-and-select switch and stacked optical-code (OC) label processing [4]. It enables to reduce the latency and simplify the control of complicated switching, scheduling and optical buffering because its payload time duration is fixed but it features variable bandwidth by changing the wavelength count as well as ultrafast all-optical label processing of the packet header. On the other hand, one real issue is how to connect such high-speed OPS networks and current networks based on Internet protocol (IP) technology. To accommode IP packets into over-80-Gbit/s optical packets in network edge nodes, the layer-3 IP switches (called as IP-OP or OP-IP converters) as interfaces between 80 Gbit/s OPS networks and 10 Gbit/s Ethernet (10GbE) have been developed [3]. Very recently, we have demonstrated 4K uncompressed streaming over 80 (10 x 8) Gbps colored optical packet switching network using IP-OP/OP-IP converters [5] and raised specific problems in OPS system, including the throughput limitation of IP-OP and OP-IP converters, the peak power fluctuation of the EDFA output due to instantaneous variation of the packet arrival rate, and poor dynamic range of the optical burst-mode receiver. In this paper, we solve the above problems [5] by optimizing IP-OP and OP-IP converters and newly developing a high-speed, automatic-gaincontrol, burst-mode (AGC-BM) EDFA and highsensitive, wide-dynamic range optical burstmode receiver. With these devices, we successfully demonstrate a field trial of 80 (10 x 8) Gbps colored optical packet switching of 4K and 2K uncompressed streaming using SOA based broadcast-and-select switch and opticalcode label processing for the first time. Key technologies Figure 1 shows the colored optical packet switching network with SOA based broadcastand-select switch and OC label processing. The switching node mainly consists of optical switches and optical label processor (Fig.1a). In the optical switch, the broadcast-and-select architecture is adopted using SOA switch array [6]. It takes advantage of the gain of the SOA switches to compensate the optical signal losses due to the power splitting. Figure 1b shows a configuration of optical packet format. Colored packets are forwarded based on the routing ECOC 2010, 19-23 September, 2010, Torino, Italy 978-1-4244-8535-2/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE We.7.D.2