All-optical address recognition scheme for label-swapping networks

A two-bit all-optical correlator based on cascaded logic XOR gates is demonstrated with 10-Gb/s optical labels. Error-free operation with 13-dB extinction-ratio performance is achieved after the second stage by adjusting the label signal input power. The signal degradation at the device output is mainly caused by the accumulated amplified spontaneous emission noise from each active Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The experimental results show the feasibility of this architecture to perform address-recognition functionalities in photonic routers.