Modular and intelligently controlled optical buffer with last-in-first-out priority

A novel optical buffer is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The buffer is composed of a series of buffer modules that are constructed by optical threshold functions and wavelength converters. Push and pop operations of packets of the buffer are carried out in the optical domain and intelligently controlled by the incoming packets. The buffer can be applied to avoid packet contention with priority of last-in-first-out. In the experiment, when packets with 2.5 Gbit/s data enter the buffer, packets with lower priority are circulating in the buffer until there is no contention.