Hybrid OPS Networks

Hybrid OCS/OPS networks are very promising for fulfilling future network demands with very good performance results. Hybrid optical networks are classified into three classes based on their degrees of interaction and integration: client-server, parallel, and integrated. This chapter describes hybrid optical switching schemes in which OPS networking is combined with another optical switching technique (say optical circuit switching) in order to improve the performance of traffic transmission in the optical domain. Optical networks can be combined in different ways to make hybrid optical networks. The combination could be at the OPS network level only, where slotted OPS and asynchronous OPS networks are combined. Different hybrid architectures proposed for combination of OPS and OCS (i.e., wavelength routed optical networks) are also studied.