Photonic fast packet switching at 700 Mb/s

Abstract

There is currently much interest in packet switching as a flexible means of transferring digital information across optical fiber networks. Selfrouting of optical data1 and photonic packet switching2,3 have several advantages over electronic switching. In this paper we demonstrate a simple photonic packet switch that detects the address header of an optical packet and uses this information to electrically set the output of a LiNbO3 electro-optic switch that routes the packet. We show that by simply increasing the data rate of the packet information payload relative to that of the packet address header, we can greatly increase the effective data rate of the packet while keeping the switching electronics unchanged. Because the address header is small compared to the payload, the most efficient form of information transfer may involve fixing the data rate of the header at a standard rate, determined by the address decoding electronics, and using an adjustable-bit-rate payload.