Combined input and output all-optical variable buffered switch architecture for future optical routers

We present a novel optical packet switching fabric architecture incorporating both input single-stage and output multistage all-optical variable delay buffers as combined input and output queues. For a given optical buffer size (1000 B), the proposed architecture, which has combined input and output optical variable buffer queues with optimum partition, achieves packet loss rates (3.4E-5) that are three orders of magnitude lower than the case without the variable buffers and two orders of magnitude lower than the cases with input or output optical queues alone.