Photonic Switching And Universal Time Slots

An experimental switching system has been built for interconnecting autonomous electronic time-division multiplexing modules through a photonic time-multiplexed switching network. The system is called DiSCO, for Distributed Switching with Centralized Optics. DiSCO switches inter-module voice calls and inter and intra-module video calls over time multiplexed network paths through its photonic center-stage. These photonic network paths are transparent to data and are thus independent of transmitter and receiver bit rate. They are called Universal Time-Slots. The photonic center-stage application, its dilated Benes network architecture, and DiSCO's Time-Space-Time system architecture are well matched with today's lithium niobate guided-wave directional coupler technology.