Scalable Optical Packet Switches for Multiple Data Formats and Data Rates Packets

We demonstrate an optical packet switch (OPS) subsystem employing in-band labeling to allow for transparent routing of packets with multiple data formats and data bit rates. Packets employing in-band labels can be processed without the need to reconfigure the label processor and the switch when changing data format and bit-rate. The label processor is based on asynchronous optical signal processing in combination with a simple electronic combinatory network. This makes the label processor capable to process a large number of labels with low latency time (<3 ns) without complicated and power-hungry high-speed packet clock recovery and serializer/deserializer circuits. Experimental results show error-free operation of 1 × 64 OPS subsystem for 160-Gb/s return-to-zero on-off keying and 120-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero differential phase-shift keying multiwavelength packets.