A packet compression/decompression approach for very high speed optical networks

A technique to produce time-compressed optical packets for transmission over an ultra-high-speed optical network is proposed and analytically studied. The technique employs two recirculating optical loops per network node, one to optically compress a fully formatted electronic packet for transmission onto the network and one to electronically expand such a packet upon reception. Depending upon the specific parameters chosen, loss of optical power is shown to limit the packet size to the range of several tens of bits. Despite the significant spontaneous emission noise which is thereby produced, it is shown possible to maintain a bit error rate of 10^-9 and a link margin of 15-30 dB over a wide range of conditions. Finally, compression/expansion techniques are shown to introduce a new network phenomenon which prohibits a node from accessing (both for transmission and reception) two or more time slots within a contiguous group of slots of number equal to the compression ratio