Optical switch fabrics for ultra-high-capacity IP routers

Author

Gripp, Jürgen ; Duelk, Marcus ; Simsarian, John E. ; Bhardwaj, Ashish ; Bernasconi, Pietro ; Laznicka, Oldrich ; Zirngibl, Martin

Author_Institution

Lucent Technol., Bell Labs., Crawford Hill, NJ, USA

Volume

21

Issue

11

fYear

2003

Firstpage

2839

Lastpage

2850

Abstract

Next-generation switches and routers may rely on optical switch fabrics to overcome scalability problems that arise in sizing traditional electrical backplanes into the terabit regime. In this paper, we present and discuss several optical switch fabric technologies. We describe a promising approach based on arrayed waveguide gratings and fast wavelength tuning and explain the challenges with respect to technical and commercial viability. Finally, we demonstrate an optical switch fabric capable of 1.2-Tb/s throughput and show packet switching with four ports running at 40 Gb/s each.

Keywords

IP networks; arrayed waveguide gratings; channel spacing; distributed Bragg reflector lasers; laser tuning; multiplexing equipment; optical backplanes; optical transmitters; packet switching; photonic switching systems; telecommunication network routing; wavelength division multiplexing; 1.2 Tbit/s; 40 Gbit/s; arrayed waveguide gratings; backplane interconnections; burst-mode receivers; commercial viability; dense WDM systems; fast wavelength tuning; loss nonuniformity; multiplexers; optical interconnects; optical packet switching; optical switch fabrics; passive fabric cores; sampled-grating DBR; scalability problems; technical viability; terabit routers; tunable lasers; tunable transmitters; ultrahigh-capacity IP routers; Arrayed waveguide gratings; Backplanes; Costs; Fabrics; Multiprotocol label switching; Optical interconnections; Optical packet switching; Optical switches; Optical waveguides; Packet switching;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2003.819150

Filename

1251110