Optical Packet-Switching using Forward Error Correction

Optical networking technology has experienced remarkable advances in a short time, making it possible to build future Optical Networks that support bursty IP datagrams. This has resulted in numerous e orts to develop optical-burst switching WDM networks for the future Optical Network backbones. However, the optical domain lacks intelligence and cannot process the bursts, leading to increased blocking probabilities. Another option is to use circuit-switched light paths which is inherently management intensive & delay prone and results in poor network utilization. For optical-packet switching, various contention resolution schemes have been suggested which employ wavelength conversion and/or opticalbu ering to reduce the blocking probability. In this report, we present a pseudo-contention resolution scheme to improve the performance of optical packet-switching for a given blocking probability. We introduce redundancy in the form of forward error correction. Thus, the data can still be recovered in the face of some losses. Simulation results are presented which show the advantages of this scheme.