Cascadability study for optical label swapping using synchronous phase modulation

We experimentally investigate the cascadability of optical label swapping using a synchronous phase modulation technique without wavelength conversion in a recirculating loop to emulate multihop networks. We find that the power penalties for both label and payload are below 1 dB at 10^-7 bit-error rate after five hops. We also show that a system penalty can be maintained below 1 dB for an accumulated timing mismatch of 20% of bit period using synchronous phase modulation-based optical label swapping. The results show the potential to save up to 80% of wavelength converters in optical packet switched networks applications