WDM Packet Routing for High-Capacity Data Networks

We present experimental and numerical studies of a novel packet-switch architecture, the data vortex, designed for large-scale photonic interconnections. The selfrouting multihop packet switch efficiently scales to large port counts ( 10 k) while maintaining low latencies, a narrow latency distribution, and high throughput. To facilitate optical implementation, the data-vortex architecture employs a novel hierarchical topology, traffic control, and synchronous timing that act to reduce the necessary routing logic operations and buffering. As a result of this architecture, all routing decisions for the data packets are based on a single logic operation at each node. The routing is further simplified by the employment of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM)-encoded header bits, which enable packet-header processing by simple wavelength filtering. The packet payload remains in the optical domain as it propagates through the data-vortex switch fabric, exploiting the transparency and high bandwidths achievable in fiber optic transmission. In this paper, we discuss numerical simulations of the data-vortex performance and report results from an experimental investigation of multihop WDM packet routing in a recirculating test bed.