A bit-controlled multichannel time slot permutation network

We present a high-bandwidth multichannel time slot permuter handling N! permutations on N=2ⁿ optical time division multiplexed (TDM) inputs arranged as √N parallel frames with √N time slots each. A generalized non-blocking property of the reverse banyan network is obtained and is used to derive a self-routing space-domain network and its counterpart in the time domain. The network is fully pipelineable and self-routing with distributed control obtained dynamically at each switch. The permuter uses O(√N(n²)) single-bit controlled 2×2 optical switching elements with feedforward and feedback fiber delay lines, (which is a factor of O(n) reduction in hardware compared to previously proposed multichannel time slot permuters), and provides higher throughputs as compared to earlier Benes based multichannel permuters. The network preserves frame integrity and has on initial frame delay which is linear in the number of time slots