Photonic Packet Switches: Architectures and Experimental Implementations

Photonic packet switches offer high speed, data rate and format transparency, and flexihility required by future computer com­ munications and cell-based telecommunications networks. In this paper, we review experimental progress in state-of-the-art pho­ tonic packet switches with an emphasis on all-optical guided-wave systems. The term all-optical implies that the data portion of a packet remains in opticalformat from the source to the destination. While the data remain all-optical, both optical and optoelectronic techniques have been used to process packet routing functions based on extremely simple routing protocols. An overview of the design issues for all-optical photonic packet switching is given and contrasted with electronic packet switch implementations. Low-level functions that have heen experimentally implemented include routing, contention resolution, synchronization, and header regeneration. System level demonstrations. including centralized photonic switching and distributed all-optical multihop networks. will be reviewed.