High-Speed Optical Packet Switch with an Optical Digital-to-Analog Conversion-Type Header Processor

We describe a novel type of an optical packet switch with an optical header processor based on optical signal processing and wavelength routing architecture. It consists of an optical digital-to-analog conversion-type header processor, wavelength selection portion with an electrically tunable laser, a wavelength converter based on a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), and wavelength routing by use of an arrayed waveguide grating (AWG), which is called a wavelength label switch (WLS). Wavelength switching of an electrically tunable laser, and wavelength conversion were successfully achieved within a few nanoseconds after recognition of an optical header using a two-bit optical header processor and a FPGA-based wavelength table. High-speed transfer performance of less than a few tens of nanoseconds and BER of less than 10^-10 were verified in the wavelength routing operation among three assigned wavelengths.