160-Gb/s Silicon All-Optical Packet Switch for Buffer-less Optical Burst Switching

We experimentally demonstrate a 160-Gb/s Ethernet packet switch using an 8.6-mm-long silicon nanowire for optical burst switching, based on cross phase modulation in silicon. One of the four packets at the bit rate of 160 Gb/s is switched by an optical control signal using a silicon based 1 × 1 all-optical packet switch. Error free performance (BER <; 1E-9) is achieved for the switched packet. The use of optical burst switching protocols could eliminate the need for optical buffering in silicon packet switch based optical burst switching, which might be desirable for high-speed interconnects within a short-reach and small-scale network, such as board-to-board interconnects, chip-to-chip interconnects, and on-chip interconnects.