Architecture of a Dual-Stage Optical Label Switch Using Out-of-Band Wavelength and Code Optical Properties

A method of generating circuits in an optical network is optical multiple-protocol lambda switching (OMPlambdaS). For OMPlambdaS, the wavelength of the optical carrier is used as an out- of-band label to route data through the network without requiring periodic conversion to the electrical state. A method of adding a second dimension of optical encoding as an out-of-band label used for routing data through a label-switched network is presented. Combining wavelength and code multiplexing techniques generates an O³ circuit-switched network with a data capacity of up to 5.7 Tb/s on each point-to-point link in the network. The proposed architecture uses two stages to process and map labels for each bit transmitted through the network. The architecture and simulation results for the dual-stage optical label switch (DSOLS) are presented.