Architectural considerations for photonic IP router based upon optical code correlation

A photonic label switching router (PLSR) of which the photonic label processing is based upon optical code correlation, is investigated. To resolve the electronic router´s bottleneck in current Internet protocol (IP) over wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks, we will envision IP over photonic networks in which the PLSRs totally replace the electronic routers. The architectures of PLSR including the photonic label processing, the photonic label swapping, and the optical switching and their optical implementations are studied. Results of proof-of-concept experiments for the photonic label processing and photonic label swapping will confirm the feasibility to attain the target performance: the throughput of 100 Tb/s at least, the processing speed around 10 Gpacket/s, and the number of label entries up to 10 k.