A 10G QoS-enabled optical packet-switching system: Technology and experimentation

Abstract

The paper presents the architecture and experimentation of a 10-Gb/s QoS-enabled almost-all-optical packet switching system (QOPS) for metro WDM networks. By applying cluster-based wavelength sharing and downsized single-staged optical buffers, QOPS is featured by its highly scalable and cost-effective design. In this paper, we first introduce the switch architecture, system operation, and the key techniques. We describe the in-band header/payload modulation and optical label swapping that is suitable for high-speed optical packet switching. We also present the design of the highly efficient Four-Wave Mixing wavelength converters for packet preemption. We then present an adaptive bifurcated routing (ABR) that directs same-connection packets to different switch clusters according to optimal bifurcation probabilities. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate that QOPS can achieve superior packet-loss performance, QoS differentiation, and minimize traffic blocking probability.