Novel applications of one-dimensional photonic crystal in optical buffering and optical time division multiplexing

Novel applications of one-dimensional photonic crystal in optical buffering and optical time division multiplexing are suggested. These one-dimensional photonic crystal optical buffers can store data packets temporarily for a certain period of time, which depend on the lattice parameters. By changing the lattice parameters the data hold time can be changed in a desired way. This type of optical buffer finds potential application in contention resolution in optical switch of a router, in a packet-switched optical network and in design of novel optical time division multiplexers (OTDM).