Routing of 100 Gb/s words in a packet-switched optical networking demonstration (POND) node

This paper presents the design and experimental results of an optical packet-switching testbed capable of performing message routing with single wavelength time division multiplexed (TDM) packet bit rates as high as 100 Gb/s. The physical topology of the packet-switched optical networking demonstration (POND) node is based on an eight-node ShuffleNet architecture. The key enabling technologies required to implement the node such as ultrafast packet generation, high-speed packet demultiplexing, and efficient packet routing schemes are described in detail. The routing approach taken is a hybrid implementation in which the packet data is maintained purely in the optical domain from source to destination whereas control information is read from the packet header at each node and converted to the electrical domain for an efficient means of implementing routing control. The technologies developed for the interconnection network presented in this paper can be applied to larger metropolitan and wide area networks as well.