Ultra-fast all-optical packet-switched routing with a hybrid header address correlation scheme

The paper presents a new node architecture for an all-optical packet router employing multiple pulse position modulation (PPM) routing table with a hybrid packet header correlation scheme. Most existing routing tables within a node contain a large number of entries, thus resulting in a long packet header address correlation time before delivering the incoming packet to its destination. In the proposed multiple PPM routing tables (PPRTs) the packet header address is based on the binary and PPM formats which leads to a much reduced routing table size. The packet header address correlation is carried out using only a single optical AND gate, thus offering reduced system complexity. It is also shown that the proposed scheme offers unicast/multi-cast/broadcast transmitting capabilities. The propose scheme is simulated and its characteristics are investigated. The output inter-channel crosstalk (CXT) of up to-18 dB and output packet power fluctuation of 2 dB have been achieved, which largely depend on the guard time between the arriving packets.