Physical layer scalability demonstration of a WDM packet interconnection network

The physical layer scalability of a WDM optical packet interconnection network is demonstrated in a re-circulating loop test-bed that mimics propagation through multiple cascaded SOA-based switching nodes. Optical packets carrying an 8-channel 10 Gb/s-per-channel payload distributed across the C-band are shown to successfully propagate through 58 node hops while maintaining a BER of less than 10^-9. With the demonstrated physical diameter of 58 nodes, the data vortex network architecture could scale to interconnect nearly 10000 ports.