IST-LASAGNE: All-optical label-swapping employing optical logic gates and optical flip-flops

The IST-LASAGNE project aims at designing and implementing the first, modular, scalable and truly alloptical photonic router capable of operating at 40 Gb/s. The main results achieved in the project are presented in this paper, with emphasis on the implementation of network node functionalities employing optical logic gates and optical flip-flops, as well as an economical study on the proposed all-optical node architecture. Experimental results on clock recovery, packet-rate clock recovery and 2-bit label reading are provided employing optical gates based on active Mach-Zehnder interferometers as the basic building block. The obtained results are very promising towards the goal of building an all-optical photonic router for labelswapping networks.