Optical packet synchronizer using wavelength and space switching

The authors develop and demonstrate an optical packet synchronizer. Synchronization with a time resolution of 16 ns is achieved by selecting one of 64 optical paths, each with a different length, using wavelength and space switching based on a tunable distributed Bragg reflector laser diode and eight semiconductor optical amplifier gates per channel. Asynchronous optical packet signals are successfully aligned in a series of common time slots.