An Application of Spectral-Amplitude-Coding Labels in Optical Signal Buffering Over Optical Packet-Switching Networks

Optical buffering is one of the essential functions in optical packet switching (OPS) network. This letter employs optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA) signals of spectral-amplitude-coding (SAC) in a packet-buffering architecture. In the proposed scheme, the original OCDMA label of the incoming packet is identified and converted to a new label by a code-switching system. As multiple packets overlap in the time domain in a single device, SAC is adopted for packet encoding to avoid multiple access interference (MAI). The concepts of queuing system and Gaussian approximation are employed to model the buffer architecture. Simulations were conducted to demonstrate the tradeoff between packet dropping probability and the signal variations in the label identification process. The buffering performance in terms of bit-error rate (BER) is examined. The results show SAC labels perform well on packet buffering.