Experimental implementations of multiwavelength photonic packet switches

Photonic packet switches offer the high speed, data rate and format transparency, and flexibility required by future computer communications and cell-based telecommunications networks. We review the experimental progress in multiwavelength photonic packet switches with an emphasis on all-optical guided wave systems. The term all-optical implies that the data portion of a packet remains in an optical format from the source to the destination. While the data remains all-optical, both optical and optoelectronic techniques have been used to process packet routing functions based on extremely simple routing protocols. An overview of the design issues for all-optical photonic packet switching is given and contrasted to electronic packet switch implementations. Low level functions that have been experimentally implemented include routing, contention resolution, synchronization, and header regeneration. System level demonstrations, including centralized photonic switching and distributed all-optical multihop networks, are reviewed