Bit-parallel selfrouting optoelectronic switching fabrics for massively parallel wide-format data processing: principle and optical architecture

Three types of optoelectronic architectures for N×N high-performance switching fabrics with multibit word parallel data transmission through connected pairs of free-space optical channels are considered. The fabrics differ in their functional capability to realize selfrouting strictly nonblocking conflict-free networking under arbitrary call requests. The possibility of creating such networks from laser and photodetector arrays, smart pixel structures, free-space optics, lenslets or selfoc lens arrays, and electronic control circuits is discussed