Demonstration of Asynchronous Operation of a Multiwavelength Optical Packet-Switched Fabric

Asynchronous wavelength-striped message routing is experimentally demonstrated for a 4 × 4 optical packet-switched network test-bed. Asynchronous transmission provides increased interconnection network flexibility for future high-performance computing systems. Multiwavelength optical packets with 6 × 10-Gb/s payloads are shown correctly routed asynchronously through the network. Error-free operation with bit-error rates less than 10^-12 is confirmed, with an average induced power penalty of 0.5 dB for the six payload wavelengths.