Physical-layer network coding for passive optical interconnect in datacenter networks.

Abstract

We introduce physical-layer network coding (PLNC) technique in a passive optical interconnect (POI) architecture for datacenter networks. The implementation of the PLNC in the POI at 2.5 Gb/s and 10Gb/s have been experimentally validated while the gains in terms of network layer performances have been investigated by simulation. The results reveal that in order to realize negligible packet drop, the wavelengths usage can be reduced by half while a significant improvement in packet delay especially under high traffic load can be achieved by employing PLNC over POI.