All-optical packet header recognition and switching in a reconfigurable network using fiber Bragg gratings for time-to-wavelength mapping and decoding

We demonstrate reconfigurable all-optical header recognition and routing of a 2.5-Gbit/s packet stream using time-to-wavelength mapping with a fiber Bragg grating array correlation decoding. We achieve penalty-free routing using a 1.6-ns guard time. This technique would be useful to enable high-speed all-optical packet switching nodes.