Design Considerations for a High-Speed Metro Network Using All-Optical Packet Processing

Future metropolitan area networks (MANs) must be capable of providing high bandwidth, supporting multiple protocols, fast provisioning of different granularities of bandwidth, as well as good scalability and protection. All-optical packet switching, while combining high throughput with a large flexibility, might be a good candidate for next-generation MANs. This paper reports on a dynamic metro network that uses all-optical packet processing and switching techniques. The proposed MAN comprises a high data rate ring that interconnects concentration nodes equipped with optical switches, modules for optical data rate conversion, all-optical clock recovery, and header recognition based upon optical code correlation. Some preliminary results of our analysis performed on both module and system levels are presented