High-Speed Optical Packet Processing Technologies for Optical Packet-Switched Networks

Hirokazu TAKENOUCHI  Tatsushi NAKAHARA  Kiyoto TAKAHATA  Ryo TAKAHASHI  Hiroyuki SUZUKI 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics  Vol.E88-C  No.3  pp.286-294
Publication Date: 2005/03/01
Online ISSN: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Optical Signal-Processing Devices for Photonic Networks)
Category: INVITED
Keyword: 
optical packet switching,  optical packet processing,  serial-to-parallel converter,  parallel-to-serial converter,  optical clock-pulse generator,  multi-protocol label switching,  MPLS, 

Full Text: PDF(1.6MB)

Summary: 
Asynchronous optical packet switching (OPS) is a promising solution to support the continuous growth of transmission capacity demand. It has been, however, quite difficult to implement key functions needed at the node of such networks with all-optical approaches. We have proposed a new optoelectronic system composed of a packet-by-packet optical clock-pulse generator (OCG), an all-optical serial-to-parallel converter (SPC), a photonic parallel-to-serial converter (PSC), and CMOS circuitry. The system makes it possible to carry out various required functions such as buffering (random access memory), optical packet compression/decompression, and optical label swapping for high-speed asynchronous optical packets.