Fast and widely tunable optical packet switching scheme based on tunable laser and dual-pump four-wave mixing

An optical packet switching scheme based on a fast electronically controllable tunable laser dual-pump four-wave mixing for wavelength conversion and an N/spl times/N arrayed waveguide grating for passive routing is examined. This scheme can realize ultrafast packet switching and large port switch fabrication, required in next-generation core optical packet routers. The performance is examined in terms of packet-based bit-error-rate measurements for packet-by-packet switching. Design issues are also discussed.