A novel photonic label switching based on optical code division multiplexing

A novel photonic label switching router (LSR) is proposed, in which label processing is based upon optical code correlation. The label is mapped onto a maximum-length sequence code. Therefore, this optical code is considered an optical code label (OC-label). This paper uses this kind of specific code with devised optical encoder and decoder pair to deploy the photonic label processor. The main functions of the proposed photonic LSR include the photonic label extracting, the photonic label processing and swapping, and the optical switching. All-optical label swapping is the key issue to implement the photonic LSR. This paper introduces all optical code conversion by using an optical time gate to regenerate a new optical short pulse that will pass through a pre-configured optical encoder. All optical label extraction by using a polarization splitter is also introduced. Finally, this paper envisions IP over photonic networks in which the photonic LSR totally replaces the electronic routers by employing an ultra-fast photonic label processing technique to resolve the electronic router's bottleneck in current IP over WDM networks.