An ultrafast photonic ATM switch based on bit-interleave multiplexing

An optical ATM switch is proposed in which cells from individual input channels are time-division multiplexed in a bit-interleave manner. This switch can easily handle multicast switching because it is based on a broadcast-and-select network. Compared to an alternative switch that uses a cell-interleave time-division multiplexing scheme, the proposed optical switch has a much simpler structure. It does not need a cell compressor at each input and a cell expander at each output, which greatly reduces hardware complexity. Feasibility analyzes showed that a 64/spl times/64 photonic ATM switch with 2.5 Gb/s input/output is possible using the proposed technology. In an experimental demonstration, 4 b cells were selected from a 55 Gb/s bit-interleave multiplexed cell stream by using a new nonlinear optical fiber switch. With its high switch throughput, our switch is a strong candidate for future large-capacity optical switching nodes.