Dynamic power considerations in a complete 12 /spl times/ 12 optical packet switching network

The dynamic optical power characteristics of an implemented 12-port optical packet switching network are measured for multiple-wavelength packets with 16 payload wavelengths and five routing header wavelengths. The system demonstrates an average dynamic optical power range of approximately 6.7 dB at the 10/sup -12/ bit-error-rate (BER) threshold, and 8.2 dB at 10/sup -9/ BER. These measurements which investigate how the system affects the encoded optical packets are discussed as metrics for network scalability and robustness.