Abstract
Optical buffering has been one of the major technical challenges in
realizing optical packet switching (OPS) routers. While
fiber-delay-line-based (FDL) buffers are the most practical and realistic
solution to offer useful amount of capacity, the bulkiness of long FDLs and
optical switches has been the main obstacle to practical implementation.
This paper demonstrates a compact optical buffer with up to 750-ns capacity
and 50-ns temporal resolution by using an InP integrated 1$\, \times \,$16 optical phased-array switch and compact FDL module based on
thin-cladding highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF). Owing to the high mode
confinement inside HNLF, 15 fibers with the total length of 1.2 km are
coiled onto a single bobbin with a coin-sized footprint without increasing
the propagation loss. At the interface between the InP switch and FDLs, a
pitch-converting silica planar-lightwave circuit chip is employed to achieve
16-port simultaneous uniform interconnection. Using the developed module,
variable optical buffering experiment is demonstrated, where the packet
intervals are expanded from 20 to 70 ns successfully.
© 2011 IEEE
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