Standardization of optical packet switching with many-wavelength packets

Abstract

A many-wavelength packet is a packet simultaneously encoded over many-wavelengths occupying wide bandwidth, say, 1Tbps. Many-wavelength packets are switched and buffered with wide band devices, fully exploiting wide bandwidth of optics to achieve future packet-based, ultra-high speed transport networks. Optical packet switches with many-wavelength packets can be constructed with reasonable number of optical switches and FDLs (fiber delay lines) of reasonable lengths, in which switches can be controlled electrically with header information encoded in a few wavelengths to route each packet to a proper FDL or an output port. Standardization is important for format of many-wavelength packets, because they will be used at the backbone beyond multiple network operators purely optically without being converted to electric packets.