Optoelectronic Multi-Gb/s Packet Switching Network

摘要

An optoelectronic network architecture is proposed that would provide multi-Gb/s data for electronic users at the network access points. Constructed with current technology, the network transports short packets through multiple switching nodes optically. It is based on three interlocking concepts that exploit the advantages of optics: a simple interconnection topology supporting high connectivity and concurrency, a lean self-routing flow-through protocol permitting an 'optical' implementation, and large-scale optical packet time compression/decompression to/from the electronic format of the users. The document is a more technical version of a joint proposal to the National Science Foundation with the Center of Telecommunications Research at Columbia University.